Malayalam live captions and productivity tool for restaurants & cafes
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
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Everything you need to follow Malayalam restaurants & cafes
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Malayalam speakers.
Follow the conversation through the noise
- Captions the person across the table in real time
- Works through typical restaurant background noise
- Place the phone between you — no adjustment needed
- No lip reading, no facing the speaker
Restaurants abroad or with foreign speakers
- They speak their language — you read in yours
- For waitstaff, companions, or travel dining
- 60+ languages, no setup
- Translates in real time as they speak
Transcribe any recorded conversation
- Record and get the full conversation in writing
- Review anything you missed after the meal
- Organised by speaker
- Any language, any format
Key points from any conversation
- Important points extracted from any recording
- Useful for business lunches and important catch-ups
- Organised into clear sections
- Works on any saved recording
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreEvery situation covered
Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.
Dinner with family in Kerala — a shared sadhya on banana leaf, or puttu and kadala curry at the kitchen table — is a warm, talkative occasion where Malayalam runs continuously. A hard of hearing person at a Kerala family table needs real-time captions to follow.
Business lunches in Kochi or Thiruvananthapuram often switch between Malayalam and English. Missing a key comment in either language can mean missing the substance of what was agreed.
A quick chai stop at a local tea stall or a breakfast at an Udupi hotel in Kerala is a daily ritual. Fast orders and conversation in rapid Malayalam add noise on top of a phonologically complex language.
Travelling and eating out across Kerala — from a Malabar biryani spot in Kozhikode to a Syrian Christian restaurant in Kottayam — means navigating northern and southern Malayalam varieties. Captio AI captions whatever is spoken.
Group celebrations in Kerala — Onam sadhya, weddings, and family functions — are loud, communal, and involve overlapping Malayalam conversation across large tables. Following without captioning means catching only pieces.
A one-on-one meal at a quieter Kochi restaurant carries the expectation of sustained Malayalam or Malayalam-English conversation. Missing a sentence — with geminate or nasal contrasts that change meaning — creates distance that captions prevent.
Most accurate and fastest models
word accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
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Download on theApp Store
Built for the table — however noisy the room
Follows the person across the table
Point the microphone toward the person speaking and Captio AI captions them through the background noise. You do not need to face them, watch their lips, or lean in.
Works through restaurant noise
Restaurant noise averages 80 dBA — well above comfortable conversation level. Captio AI is built for these real environments, not quiet controlled rooms.
Place it and forget it
Put the phone on the table between you and the other person, microphone facing them. You glance at it as needed. No adjusting between sentences, no managing the setup.
No asking for repeats during the meal
Every word appears in real time. If you missed something, the caption is there — you do not need to stop the conversation and ask anyone to say it again.
Any language
For restaurants abroad, multilingual dining companions, or waitstaff who speak a different language. Live Translator captions and translates in real time with no manual setup.
Discreet
A phone on a restaurant table is unremarkable. Captio AI runs quietly, the screen faces you, and most dining companions adapt naturally once they understand what it does.
Why Malayalam is hard to understand
Three nasal series
- Dental, alveolar, and retroflex nasals all look the same
- Malayalam distinguishes three different nasal consonants in the same general position: dental /n̪/, alveolar /n/, and retroflex /ɳ/. All three are produced with the nasal passage open but differ in where the tongue tip contacts the upper mouth — a distinction entirely invisible from outside. At a restaurant table, food names and everyday nouns depend on which nasal was used.
Geminate consonants
- Length distinctions invisible on the lips
- Malayalam has phonemic consonant length — geminates held longer than single consonants and carrying different meanings. 'Kata' vs 'katta', 'mala' vs 'malla' are distinguished only by how long the consonant is held. This duration distinction is completely invisible from lip movement. In fast Kerala restaurant conversation, geminates appear constantly in food names and social vocabulary.
Regional dialect spectrum
- North, Central, and South Kerala speech differ
- Malayalam has approximately 15 regional dialects with significant variation in vowel quality, intonation, and vocabulary. Malabar Malayalam (northern Kerala) differs from Central Kerala and from the southern varieties around Thiruvananthapuram. Community-based registers (Mappila Malayalam) add further phonological variation across the state.
Vowel recognition with hearing loss
- Vowel quality carries heavy load in Malayalam word recognition
- A 2024 study (PMC11639911) examining disyllabic word identification in Malayalam for individuals with hearing loss found that vowel context significantly affected recognition accuracy. Malayalam's complex vowel system — including both length distinctions and quality contrasts — creates specific word recognition challenges for hard of hearing Malayalam speakers.
Malayalam-English code-switching
- Urban Kerala restaurants blend both languages
- In Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, and Kozhikode, Malayalam and English are mixed in social and professional conversations. 'Malayanglish' code-switching is heavy in educated urban settings — menu items in English, conversation in Malayalam, side remarks in either. The switching removes phonological predictability.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreHearing loss in India: the burden across Kerala's tables
India has approximately 63 million people with significant hearing impairment — 6.3% of the national population — making it the second most common disability category. Kerala, home to Malayalam, has higher than average public health awareness than most Indian states, yet hearing loss services remain concentrated in major urban centres like Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram. Rural Malayalam-speaking communities across Kerala's interior and coastal belt face limited access to audiological care.
A 2024 study published in PMC11639911 examined how individuals with hearing loss in Malayalam-speaking populations identified disyllabic words, finding that vowel context significantly affected recognition accuracy. Malayalam's complex vowel system — both length contrasts and quality contrasts — creates a language-specific word recognition challenge for hard of hearing Malayalam speakers. This research underscores that Malayalam-specific interventions, not generic solutions, are needed for this community.
Captio AI captions Malayalam conversation in real time — whether the family gathers for an Onam sadhya in Thrissur and everyone speaks at once, or a colleague makes a point during a business lunch in a noisy Kochi restaurant.
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
"Malayalam geminates are impossible to lip-read — the only difference is how long the consonant lasts and you can't see duration. Captio shows me the right word and I stop guessing across the dinner table."
"Business lunches in Trivandrum switch between Malayalam and English mid-sentence. Captio follows both and I'm part of the conversation instead of trailing behind."
"Kerala expat community in Dubai meets for Onam dinners and the Malayalam is fast and nostalgic. I used to watch from the sideline. Captio gives me the full table conversation."
"Central Kerala Malayalam has its own rhythm and word patterns — my Malabar relatives and I always needed a moment to adjust. Captio follows both and I finally understand conversations across the regional gap."
"Malayalam geminates are impossible to lip-read — the only difference is how long the consonant lasts and you can't see duration. Captio shows me the right word and I stop guessing across the dinner table."
"Business lunches in Trivandrum switch between Malayalam and English mid-sentence. Captio follows both and I'm part of the conversation instead of trailing behind."
"Kerala expat community in Dubai meets for Onam dinners and the Malayalam is fast and nostalgic. I used to watch from the sideline. Captio gives me the full table conversation."
"Central Kerala Malayalam has its own rhythm and word patterns — my Malabar relatives and I always needed a moment to adjust. Captio follows both and I finally understand conversations across the regional gap."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Have a real conversation through the noise in Malayalam.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store