Chinese live captions and productivity tool for traveling
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
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Everything you need to follow Chinese traveling
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Chinese speakers.
Captions any spoken exchange, anywhere
- Airport staff, hotel receptionists, taxi drivers
- Real time, word by word, as they speak
- Works through travel noise and accents
- No setup — open the app and point it
No language barrier, anywhere in the world
- They speak their language — you read in yours
- 60+ languages, no manual switching
- For customs, hotels, restaurants, and local transport
- Translates in real time as they speak
Transcribe any recorded content
- Record a tour guide, a briefing, an important exchange
- Upload and get the full transcript to review
- Any language, any format
- Useful for travel information you want in writing
Key travel information extracted
- Instructions, directions, and key details from any transcript
- Organised into clear sections
- Useful after complex hotel check-ins or guided briefings
- 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.
At Beijing Capital, Shanghai Pudong, or Hong Kong International, gate changes and boarding calls come in Mandarin or Cantonese. Captio AI captions every announcement so you never miss a boarding time or gate change.
China's high-speed rail network (CRH) announces platforms and stations in Mandarin at speed. Captio AI captions ticket window conversations and platform PA at Beijing South, Shanghai Hongqiao, and every station in between.
A hotel receptionist in Shanghai or Chengdu explaining room details, check-in procedures, and local tips in Mandarin. Place Captio AI on the desk and follow every word of the conversation without asking for repeats.
Asking directions in Beijing's hutongs or navigating Shanghai's Metro system. Fast conversational Mandarin — Captio AI captions in real time so you understand the first time.
Chinese border control officers at international arrivals speak quickly and formally in Mandarin. Captio AI captions every question so you respond accurately and confidently.
A guide at the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, or West Lake in Hangzhou delivering Mandarin commentary. Captio AI captions so you follow the full story behind every site.
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 a world that announces everything by sound
Captions any spoken exchange in real time
Airport staff, hotel receptionists, taxi drivers, tour guides. Hold the phone toward whoever is speaking and read the captions — in any setting, in any country.
60+ languages — no language barrier
Live Translator captions and translates in real time. They speak their language — you read in yours. For every country, every language, no manual setup between interactions.
Works anywhere with a data connection
Wi-Fi or mobile data. A local SIM or roaming plan keeps Captio AI running in any country — airports, hotels, rural areas, and everywhere in between.
Handles travel environments
Noisy airports, busy stations, echoing hotel lobbies. Captio AI is built for real environments — not quiet controlled rooms. It captions through the ambient noise of travel.
Discreet in any public setting
Hold the phone or place it near the speaker. Captio AI runs quietly and draws no attention — useful in customs, immigration, and any formal travel interaction where discretion matters.
Private by default
Travel conversations — customs declarations, hotel bookings, personal exchanges — are never stored or shared. Audio is processed in real time and discarded immediately.
Why Chinese is hard to understand
Tonal collapse
- Four tones carried entirely by pitch — nothing on the lips
- Mandarin's four lexical tones are suprasegmental — they are produced by pitch contour, not by any change in lip, tongue, or jaw position. At a Beijing immigration counter or a Shanghai hotel desk, 'mǎi' (buy) and 'mài' (sell), 'shū' (book) and 'shú' (cooked) look completely identical on the lips. The information that distinguishes words in Mandarin is simply invisible to a deaf traveler.
Retroflex-alveolar confusion
- zh/z, ch/c, sh/s — identical on the lips
- Mandarin distinguishes retroflex initials (zh, ch, sh, r) from alveolar initials (z, c, s) — a contrast that is visually near-identical. These pairs appear in core travel vocabulary: 'zhàn' (station) and 'zàn' (praise), 'chē' (vehicle) and 'cè' (toilet), 'shū' (book) and 'sū' (revive). At a high-speed rail ticket window or a hotel reception, these distinctions are invisible on the speaker's face.
Dialect diversity
- Putonghua at the airport, Cantonese at the gate
- Standard Mandarin (Putonghua) is China's official language, but Hong Kong operates in Cantonese, Shanghai in Shanghainese-inflected Mandarin, Fujian in Hokkien-influenced speech, and Guangzhou in Cantonese. A deaf traveler calibrated to Putonghua arrives at Hong Kong International to find Cantonese — a completely different tonal and phonological system — spoken by airline and immigration staff.
Tone sandhi and neutral tone
- Tones reduce and merge in fast natural speech
- In conversational Mandarin, many syllables reduce to a neutral tone, and tone sandhi rules cause tones to shift when syllables combine. At a busy ticket counter at Beijing South or Shanghai Hongqiao high-speed rail station, the Mandarin a traveler prepared for — with four distinct clear tones — arrives in a reduced, merged form where tonal distinctions are even further compressed.
Large initial inventory
- Many initials, few lip-level distinctions
- Mandarin has a complex initial inventory where many distinctions are made behind the lips or at the alveolar ridge — positions largely invisible in face-to-face communication. A deaf traveler watching a customs officer or train conductor sees gross lip movement while the phonemic distinctions that matter — bilabial vs. labiodental, velar vs. palatal — occur where no face-to-face observation can reach.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreHearing loss and travel accessibility in China
China carries the world's largest absolute hearing loss burden. A 2024 study in the Chinese Medical Journal, drawing on provincial-level analysis, estimated that 115 million people had moderate-to-complete hearing loss across China's 31 provinces in 2015 — approximately 8.4% of the population. A separate analysis of GBD 2021 data found that the number of people living with hearing loss in China rose by 125% between 1990 and 2021, driven by population ageing. Projections estimate that by 2060, 242 million people in China will have moderate-to-complete hearing loss — a 110% increase from 2015.
China's travel infrastructure — including the world's largest high-speed rail network and airports handling over a billion passenger movements per year — communicates critical information almost entirely through Mandarin spoken PA announcements and verbal counter exchanges. China Railways High-speed (CRH) trains announce station stops in Mandarin over onboard PA; platform change announcements at major hubs like Beijing South or Guangzhou South are delivered by spoken PA with no standardised real-time captioning. For deaf and hard of hearing travelers on China's rail network, a missed station announcement has real consequences on a journey moving at 300 km/h.
Captio AI captions Mandarin in real time — whether a platform PA at Shanghai Hongqiao, an immigration officer at Beijing Capital, or a tour guide at the Forbidden City — so a deaf traveler in China follows every announcement, instruction, and question without depending on audio infrastructure built without them in mind.
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
"CRH train station announcements come in fast Mandarin and the halls at Beijing South are noisy. I held Captio AI toward the PA speaker and read the platform change on screen. I caught the train I would have missed."
"Chinese border control at Pudong airport asks questions quickly and formally. I pointed Captio AI at the officer and every question appeared on my screen. I answered correctly the first time — no confusion, no asking for repeats."
"I travel between Hong Kong and the mainland constantly. HKG announces in Cantonese and the mainland airports in Mandarin. Captio AI handles both without me switching anything. The language change at the border is invisible to me now."
"The guide at the Leshan Giant Buddha spoke fast Sichuan-accented Mandarin. I would normally get a third of a tour guide's commentary. With Captio AI I followed every detail — the history, the construction timeline, the religious significance."
"CRH train station announcements come in fast Mandarin and the halls at Beijing South are noisy. I held Captio AI toward the PA speaker and read the platform change on screen. I caught the train I would have missed."
"Chinese border control at Pudong airport asks questions quickly and formally. I pointed Captio AI at the officer and every question appeared on my screen. I answered correctly the first time — no confusion, no asking for repeats."
"I travel between Hong Kong and the mainland constantly. HKG announces in Cantonese and the mainland airports in Mandarin. Captio AI handles both without me switching anything. The language change at the border is invisible to me now."
"The guide at the Leshan Giant Buddha spoke fast Sichuan-accented Mandarin. I would normally get a third of a tour guide's commentary. With Captio AI I followed every detail — the history, the construction timeline, the religious significance."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Navigate confidently in Chinese.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store