Bulgarian live captions and productivity tool for lectures
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
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Everything you need to follow Bulgarian lectures
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Bulgarian speakers.
Follow the lecture as it happens
- Captions appear word by word while the lecturer is still speaking
- Works in lecture halls, seminars, and tutorials
- No setup — place the phone on your desk and start
- Any accent, any pace
For courses in another language
- Captions and translates in real time
- For international students or foreign-language courses
- 60+ languages, no switching
- Follow the lecture in the language you read best
Full transcript to study from
- Record the lecture and upload it for a complete written transcript
- Searchable, copyable, shareable
- Review at your own pace after class
- Works on any lecture recording
Key points extracted automatically
- Important concepts and takeaways pulled from any transcript
- Organised into sections — not one continuous block
- Useful for revision and exam preparation
- Works on any saved lecture transcript
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreEvery situation covered
Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.
Large lecture halls at Sofia University, Plovdiv University, and Varna's universities — Bulgarian instruction at full academic pace. Captio AI captions the professor in real time from any seat.
Seminars and практикуми (tutorial sessions) where discussion is in Bulgarian, often with English scientific terminology. Captio AI handles both without manual switching.
Recorded lectures on university e-learning portals or shared as video files — play on speaker and Captio AI captions whatever is playing in real time.
Study group sessions in Bulgarian student accommodation reviewing lecture content. Captio AI captions whoever is speaking.
Lectures from western Bulgarian faculty (Vidin, Pleven) whose Bulgarian carries regional dialectal features. Captio AI handles standard and regional Bulgarian varieties.
Online courses and webinars delivered by Bulgarian universities. Captio AI captions any audio source in real time.
Most accurate and fastest models
word accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
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Built for the pace and pressure of a real lecture
Follow without splitting your attention
Lip-reading and note-taking at the same time is an impossible cognitive load. Captio AI handles the following so you can direct all your attention to understanding what is being said.
Captions while the lecturer is still speaking
Words appear on your screen as they are said — not after the sentence ends. You stay in sync with the lecture rather than always being a beat behind.
Works in any lecture setting
Lecture halls, seminar rooms, online classes, study groups. Place the phone on your desk, point it toward the audio source, and Captio AI handles the rest.
A full transcript to study from
Record the lecture and upload it to Audio Transcription after class. Get a complete written record you can search, annotate, and revise from — at your own pace.
60+ languages
For international students, students studying abroad, or courses taught in a second language. Captio AI captions or translates in real time with no manual setup.
No advance notice needed
Official university captioning requires booking in advance and is not available for every session. Captio AI works for any lecture, any time, with no prior arrangement.
Why Bulgarian is hard to understand
Back unrounded vowel
- Bulgarian's ъ vowel is produced with the lips in a neutral position — nearly invisible
- Bulgarian has a distinctive back unrounded vowel /ɤ/ written as ъ, absent from most other European languages. It is produced with the tongue retracted but the lips barely moving. In a Sofia lecture hall, words whose meaning hinges on this vowel arrive with an almost flat lip shape, making it indistinguishable from schwa or /a/ to a deaf student.
Eastern-Western dialect split
- Western and eastern Bulgarian produce different lip patterns for the same written words
- The historical 'yat' vowel /æ/ is realised differently across Bulgarian dialects: standard and eastern Bulgarian uses /ja/ (byal), while western dialects use /e/ (bel) for the same word. A deaf student calibrated to Sofia standard Bulgarian finds Vidin or Vratsa faculty delivering word shapes they do not recognise.
Consonant cluster accumulation
- Fast Bulgarian lecture speech builds consonant clusters with no vowel anchor
- Bulgarian lost proto-Slavic short vowels earlier than related Slavic languages, leaving a high density of consonant clusters in native vocabulary. At academic lecture pace, these clusters arrive in rapid succession. A deaf student tracking lip positions between vowels finds the consonant-dense Bulgarian academic register compresses into near-continuous lip contacts.
Palatalization
- Palatalized consonant pairs look identical to hard consonants on the lips
- Bulgarian has palatalized consonants /ʎ/ and /ɲ/ alongside their non-palatalized counterparts. Both the soft and hard versions involve similar lip positions — the distinction is made by tongue body position, invisible from the front. In a fast lecture, a deaf student cannot visually distinguish soft from hard consonants.
Unstressed vowel reduction
- Bulgarian reduces unstressed vowels significantly — syllable shapes blur at lecture speed
- In fast Bulgarian academic speech, unstressed vowels reduce and shorten. The vowel inventory that is clearly articulated in careful speech compresses at full lecture pace. A deaf student who learned to read Bulgarian lip movements from careful speech must recalibrate for the reduced forms of every unstressed syllable in a real lecture.
Download for free
Download on theApp Store12,000 deaf signers in Bulgaria — served by 46 interpreters
The Union of the Deaf in Bulgaria, established in 1934 and the oldest large disability organisation in the country, estimates approximately 12,000 deaf sign language users in Bulgaria. Against this population, Bulgaria has only 46 working sign language interpreters — a ratio of roughly one interpreter per 261 deaf signers. This is among the most severe interpreter shortages in the European Union, and it means that for most deaf Bulgarians, formal sign language access to any institution is available in principle but not in practice.
An estimated 15% of the Bulgarian population lives with disability. Bulgaria's disability policy has historically taken a medical and charity approach, focusing on individual conditions rather than removing institutional barriers. Bulgarian Sign Language has not received full statutory legal recognition equivalent to that accorded by most Western European countries. Universities in Bulgaria do not provide systematic live captioning, and deaf students at Sofia University, Plovdiv University, or South-West University must individually arrange accommodation — against a backdrop of 46 interpreters nationwide.
Bulgaria is a member of the European Union of the Deaf, and EU disability frameworks apply — but implementation at the institutional level is slow. A deaf student in Sofia attending a full university programme encounters 20–30 hours of spoken Bulgarian lectures per week with no standard supported access mechanism. Captio AI captions Bulgarian lecture speech in real time, handling standard Sofia Bulgarian and regional varieties from Plovdiv or Varna, making every lecture accessible without prior arrangement.
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 ъ vowel has almost no lip movement. I was reading Bulgarian lips and missing that sound every time. Captio AI captures it acoustically. Sofia lectures make sense now."
"My professor is from Vidin — western Bulgarian. The yat vowel sounds different from Sofia standard. Captio AI handles both. Regional accent is no longer a barrier."
"No interpreter available at our university. Captio AI captions every lecture in real time. I'm following economics lectures in Bulgarian the same day as hearing students."
"Bulgarian fast speech has consonant clusters with almost no vowels between them. Nothing to track on the lips. Captio AI gets the phonology right. Varna lectures are accessible."
"The ъ vowel has almost no lip movement. I was reading Bulgarian lips and missing that sound every time. Captio AI captures it acoustically. Sofia lectures make sense now."
"My professor is from Vidin — western Bulgarian. The yat vowel sounds different from Sofia standard. Captio AI handles both. Regional accent is no longer a barrier."
"No interpreter available at our university. Captio AI captions every lecture in real time. I'm following economics lectures in Bulgarian the same day as hearing students."
"Bulgarian fast speech has consonant clusters with almost no vowels between them. Nothing to track on the lips. Captio AI gets the phonology right. Varna lectures are accessible."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Follow every lecture in Bulgarian.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store