Chinese live captions and productivity tool for everyday conversations
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store
Everything you need to follow Chinese everyday conversations
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Chinese speakers.
Captions any conversation in real time
- Word by word, as the person speaks
- Works in noisy places — counters, streets, busy rooms
- Any accent, any pace
- No lip reading needed
Everyday conversations in any language
- Translates as they speak, not after
- Each person speaks their own language
- Handles mid-sentence switches
- 60+ languages, no setup
Save any conversation for later
- Record and get the full transcript
- Organized by speaker
- Read, copy, search, share
- Any language, any audio
Key points from any exchange
- Important points extracted automatically
- Works on any saved transcript
- Organized into clear sections
- Nothing gets missed
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreEvery situation covered
Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.
Pharmacy counter, supermarket cashier, bank teller, government service window. Staff speak fast in Mandarin or Cantonese and move to the next customer. Captio AI shows what they said before the moment passes.
Hot pot dinner, Lunar New Year banquet, friend group in a loud restaurant. Multiple people, overlapping voices, different Chinese varieties in the same room. Captio AI captions whoever is speaking.
Getting a price from a street vendor, asking directions in a new neighbourhood, chatting with a neighbour in the lift. People who speak at full pace. Captio AI captions anyone near you.
Office tea break, quick question across the open-plan floor, chat before the meeting starts. Fast-paced workplace exchanges in Mandarin or Cantonese. Captio AI keeps you in those conversations.
Hospital outpatient window, government affairs counter, bank branch. Formal vocabulary, queues behind you, no repeat offered. Captio AI transcribes everything said so you can respond accurately.
Metro announcements, taxi driver conversation, rail station staff, asking at a bus stop. China's transport communicates entirely through sound. Captio AI covers you anywhere on the move.
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 conversations that don't wait
Captions as they speak, not after
Captio AI shows each word as it is spoken. You read what the person is saying while they are still saying it — not after they have finished and moved on.
No lip reading needed
You do not need to face the speaker or position yourself to see their mouth. Captio AI picks up speech from any direction — across a counter, at a table, in a busy street.
Works through background noise
Restaurants, pharmacies, busy streets, crowded waiting rooms. Captio AI separates speech from background noise so captions stay accurate where everyday conversations actually happen.
Follows any conversation
One person or six. Captio AI captions whoever is speaking at any moment — so you follow the thread at a dinner table or keep up with a counter exchange without losing track.
Any accent, any pace
People do not slow down or enunciate for you. Captio AI handles fast talkers, regional accents, and casual speech — the way people actually talk in real life.
Any language, no setup
When someone speaks a language you do not know, switch to Live Translator. They speak their language — you read in yours. No configuration needed. Works in 60+ languages.
Why Chinese is hard to understand
Counter interactions
- The pharmacy counter does not wait
- Shop staff, pharmacists, and service workers speak at full conversational pace and do not know you are deaf. There is no interpreter at a pharmacy counter. The person behind you is already impatient. You have one exchange to get it right.
Family settings
- Family dinners exclude through speed, not hostility
- Multigenerational Chinese family gatherings involve fast overlapping speech, jokes, callbacks, and sudden topic shifts. The social meaning — who laughed, what was implied — matters as much as the words. Casual family Mandarin is nothing like formal speech: syllables drop, tones flatten, regional varieties mix.
Casual register
- Daily Chinese sounds nothing like the textbook
- Formal Mandarin has clear tones and deliberate pronunciation. Everyday speech drops syllables, neutralises tones, and runs sentence particles together. The gap between classroom Chinese and what a street vendor or neighbour actually says is immense — and widens at conversational speed.
Word boundaries
- Chinese speech has no pauses between words — meaning arrives in streams
- Chinese has no spaces between words in writing and no consistent acoustic word boundaries in speech. In casual Mandarin, sentence-final particles (呢, 啊, 吧) blur into the next utterance, and syllables link across word boundaries. For a deaf person parsing meaning visually, there are no natural stopping points — the speech is one continuous stream with no reliable anchors.
Code-switching
- Daily conversations switch languages without warning
- In Hong Kong, Singapore, and urban Taiwan, a single street interaction or family meal can move between Cantonese, Mandarin, and English mid-sentence. Following the meaning requires all three at once — something no single-language approach handles.
Download for free
Download on theApp Store27.8 million people. Excluded from ordinary life.
China has the largest deaf and hard of hearing population in the world — 27.8 million people, according to the Second National Sample Survey on Disability. They are not excluded from education or employment alone. They are excluded from the texture of daily social life: the family meal where everyone else is laughing, the neighbourhood exchange that hearing people complete without thinking, the moment of belonging that happens through casual conversation.
China has no formal recognition of sign language as a national language. Interpreter services are concentrated in cities and institutions. For the 27.8 million navigating everyday life — not workplaces or hospitals, but streets, homes, and the unstructured flow of daily existence — there is no system. There is only the individual, managing alone, every day.
Hearing loss prevalence in China has risen consistently from 1990 to 2021, driven by an ageing population, and is projected to continue increasing. The number of people navigating daily Chinese life without sound is growing. The infrastructure to support them in everyday conversation is not keeping pace.
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
"Casual Mandarin in Beijing moves fast and the tones run together. Captio AI follows every word. Everyday conversations stopped being exhausting."
"Cantonese everyday speech is fast and nobody thinks to slow down. I put Captio AI between me and whoever I am talking to. I stopped missing things."
"Shanghai Mandarin carries Wu features that make lip-reading almost useless. Captio AI gives me the words as they are spoken. It changed how I navigate the city."
"Singapore conversations switch between English and Mandarin without warning. Captio AI handles both in the same session. I follow everything now."
"Casual Mandarin in Beijing moves fast and the tones run together. Captio AI follows every word. Everyday conversations stopped being exhausting."
"Cantonese everyday speech is fast and nobody thinks to slow down. I put Captio AI between me and whoever I am talking to. I stopped missing things."
"Shanghai Mandarin carries Wu features that make lip-reading almost useless. Captio AI gives me the words as they are spoken. It changed how I navigate the city."
"Singapore conversations switch between English and Mandarin without warning. Captio AI handles both in the same session. I follow everything now."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Follow any conversation in Chinese.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store