Chinese live captions and productivity tool for conferences & events
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
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Everything you need to follow Chinese conferences & events
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Chinese speakers.
Follow every speaker from any seat
- Point toward the PA or nearest speaker output
- Handles keynotes, panels, and Q&A sessions
- Works in large halls, seminar rooms, and outdoor venues
- No hearing loop or venue infrastructure required
International and multilingual conferences
- Speakers present in any language — you read in yours
- 60+ languages, no switching between sessions
- For global conferences, international panels, and foreign keynotes
- Translates in real time as each speaker talks
Full transcript of any session
- Record any talk or session and get the complete written transcript
- Review content you missed or want to study after the event
- Organised by speaker
- Searchable, copyable, shareable
Key takeaways from any session
- Main points and insights extracted from any session transcript
- Useful for dense technical talks and keynotes
- Organised into clear sections
- Works on any saved conference recording
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreEvery situation covered
Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.
From a far seat in a keynote hall in Beijing or Shanghai, the speaker is distant and the room acoustics are difficult. Point Captio AI toward the nearest PA speaker and read every word of the Mandarin keynote from anywhere in the venue.
At an academic conference — a research symposium at a Chinese university or a scientific congress in Shenzhen — presenters speak fast and pack talks with terminology. Captio AI captions in real time and transcribes for later review.
Industry events, product launches, and briefings in Guangzhou or Hangzhou carry content that affects your work. Captio AI captions every speaker so you follow the panel and miss nothing professionally relevant.
In a breakout or workshop, several voices contribute in Mandarin from around the table. Place Captio AI on the table and follow every contribution, including the quieter ones from the back.
The most useful exchanges often happen over tea breaks and at the conference banquet. Captio AI works in these noisy, informal settings the same way it does in the main hall.
At an international conference in China, sessions switch between Mandarin and English. Live Translator captions foreign-language talks in real time, so a mixed-language programme becomes one you can follow throughout.
Most accurate and fastest models
character accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
Download for free
Download on theApp Store
Built for the room where you cannot ask anyone to repeat
Live captions from any seat
Point the phone toward the nearest PA output or speaker. Captio AI captions whoever is presenting in real time — from the front row or the back of a large conference hall.
Works without venue infrastructure
No hearing loop, no captioning service, no advance booking required. Captio AI works independently via microphone — whether or not the venue has provided any accessibility infrastructure.
Covers what official captioning does not
Official captioning, where it exists, typically covers the main stage only. Q&A sessions, workshops, breakouts, and networking are usually left uncaptioned. Captio AI covers all of it.
Record and review after
Record any session and upload it to Audio Transcription for a full written record. Use AI Summary to extract key takeaways — useful for dense technical content you want to process at your own pace.
60+ languages
For international conferences, foreign-language keynotes, or multilingual panels. Live Translator captions and translates in real time across 60+ languages with no manual switching between speakers.
Works for networking too
The conversations in hallways and at lunch matter as much as the sessions. Captio AI works in any setting — informal, noisy, unstructured — the same way it works in the main hall.
Why Chinese is hard to understand
Tonal collapse
- Four tones that the lips do not show
- Mandarin distinguishes words by tone — the same syllable in four different pitch contours means four different things. Tone is carried entirely by pitch, with no lip or jaw cue. In a keynote delivered from a distant stage, a deaf attendee sees the mouth but gets none of the tonal information that separates one technical term from another.
Retroflex vs alveolar
- zh, ch, sh look identical to their front counterparts
- Mandarin's retroflex initials (zh, ch, sh, r) and their alveolar counterparts (z, c, s) produce nearly identical lip shapes, and syllables like zhi, chi, shi, ri look the same on the mouth. Across a fast panel, whole families of words become visually indistinguishable to a lip-reader.
Homophone density
- So many same-sounding syllables that context is everything
- Mandarin has a small syllable inventory and huge numbers of homophones, resolved by tone and context. In a dense research talk full of specialised compounds, a deaf attendee who misses the context has no way to reconstruct which of many identical-looking words was meant.
Regional accents
- Speakers bring their home province to the podium
- A conference in Beijing draws presenters from across China, and their Mandarin carries southern, Sichuan, or northeastern colouring — merged sibilants, shifted finals, different rhythm. A deaf attendee calibrated to standard Putonghua meets a new accent with every speaker who takes the stage.
Chinese–English code-switching
- Technical terms drop into English mid-sentence
- In Chinese academic and industry talks, English technical terms, product names, and acronyms are dropped into Mandarin sentences without pause. A deaf attendee lip-reading Mandarin suddenly has to switch to English phonology for a key term, then back again, with no visual warning.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreHearing loss and professional access in China
China has roughly 27.8 million registered deaf and hard of hearing people, and broader assessments put the number with moderate-to-complete hearing loss far higher — an estimated 115 million as of 2015. Yet the weighted prevalence of hearing aid use among people with hearing loss is only around 1.9%, one of the lowest adoption rates recorded anywhere. The great majority of Chinese adults with hearing loss are navigating professional life on unaided hearing.
The professional cost is measurable. Studies of working-aged Chinese adults link hearing loss to fewer annual work hours, higher unemployment, and lower educational attainment than hearing peers, compounded by social stigma and comparatively under-resourced support. China's conference economy — the academic congresses, the tech summits in Shenzhen and Hangzhou, the industry expos in Shanghai — runs on spoken Mandarin delivered over PA systems, with real-time captioning of keynotes, panels, and Q&A almost never provided.
Captio AI closes that gap. Point the phone toward the PA and read every Mandarin keynote and panel answer from any seat, record a dense technical session for the full transcript, and follow the conversations over the tea break — so a deaf professional in Beijing or Shenzhen gets the same value from the same conference as everyone in the room.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreWhat you hear stays with you.
Gone the moment it ends
Captio AI processes your audio in real time and discards it immediately. Nothing is recorded. Nothing is kept.
Not a product
Your conversations are not something Captio AI sells, shares, or monetizes — to anyone, for any reason.
Not used to train anything
What you say in a doctor's appointment or a job interview never ends up in a training dataset. Not ours. Not anyone else's.
Private by default
Download on theApp StoreCaptio AI supports 60+ languages
People love Captio AI
"The keynote was in fast Mandarin from a stage far from my seat, full of technical compounds where tone decides the word. Captio AI captioned it from row 20 and I recorded the session too. For the first time I followed a whole talk without borrowing a colleague's notes afterward."
"Speakers drop English terms into Mandarin sentences constantly at tech events. Captio AI captioned both without me doing anything — the Mandarin and the English product names all appeared in the transcript. The panel finally made sense as one continuous thing."
"Presenters come from all over China and their accents vary a lot — southern sibilants, different finals. Captio AI did not care which accent was on stage. I read the launch briefing word for word and knew exactly what was changing in the roadmap."
"The most valuable part of any conference for me is the tea break, and it used to be the part I dreaded. Captio AI captioned the informal conversations at the reception so I could actually network. That is where the partnership talks happen."
"The keynote was in fast Mandarin from a stage far from my seat, full of technical compounds where tone decides the word. Captio AI captioned it from row 20 and I recorded the session too. For the first time I followed a whole talk without borrowing a colleague's notes afterward."
"Speakers drop English terms into Mandarin sentences constantly at tech events. Captio AI captioned both without me doing anything — the Mandarin and the English product names all appeared in the transcript. The panel finally made sense as one continuous thing."
"Presenters come from all over China and their accents vary a lot — southern sibilants, different finals. Captio AI did not care which accent was on stage. I read the launch briefing word for word and knew exactly what was changing in the roadmap."
"The most valuable part of any conference for me is the tea break, and it used to be the part I dreaded. Captio AI captioned the informal conversations at the reception so I could actually network. That is where the partnership talks happen."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Follow every speaker in Chinese.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store