French 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 French traveling
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing French 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 CDG, Orly, or Lyon-Saint-Exupéry, gate changes and boarding calls come in fast French. Captio AI captions every announcement so you never miss a boarding time or gate change.
SNCF TGV and Intercités trains announce platforms and connections in French at speed. Captio AI captions ticket counter conversations and station PA at Gare de Lyon, Gare du Nord, and every major hub.
A hotel receptionist in Paris or Lyon explaining room details, breakfast details, and local recommendations in French. Place Captio AI on the desk and follow every word of the check-in.
Asking for directions in Paris's arrondissements or navigating Lyon's Vieux-Lyon. Fast French — Captio AI captions in real time so you understand the first time.
French customs and immigration officers (PAF) at international borders speak quickly and formally. Captio AI captions every question so you respond accurately.
A guide at the Louvre, the Palace of Versailles, or the Musée d'Orsay delivering French commentary. Captio AI captions so you follow every historical and artistic detail.
Most accurate and fastest models
word 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 French is hard to understand
Liaison
- Silent letters come to life — and change how words look
- In French, word-final consonants that are normally silent become pronounced before vowel-initial words: 'les amis' is pronounced /le.z.a.mi/, not /le.a.mi/. For a deaf traveler, the same word can look completely different depending on what follows it. At a Parisian hotel check-in or a CDG gate counter, liaison means the visual lip pattern of common phrases shifts unpredictably.
Nasalized vowels
- Four nasal vowels produced at the palate — nothing on lips
- French has four nasalized vowels: /ɑ̃/ (an), /ɛ̃/ (in), /ɔ̃/ (on), /œ̃/ (un). These are produced by lowering the velum — entirely at the soft palate with no corresponding change in lip shape. At a Paris Gare de Lyon counter or a Lyon hotel desk, nasal vowels in common travel words (en retard, train, bon, brun) produce no distinguishable visual signal.
Fast connected speech
- Enchaînement and élision turn French into a continuous stream
- French linking (enchaînement) and the deletion of unstressed /ə/ (élision) mean that natural French sounds like a continuous vowel-consonant stream with no clear word boundaries. At a TGV station announcement or a CDG check-in desk, conversational French arrives as a single unbroken flow that a deaf traveler cannot segment into individual words.
Québécois and Belgian French
- French from Paris sounds nothing like Montréal
- Québécois French has distinctive diphthongs, affrication of /t/ and /d/ before /i/ and /y/ (producing /tsj/ and /dzj/), and a very different prosody from Metropolitan French. Belgian French has its own vowel qualities and regional vocabulary. A deaf traveler calibrated to Parisian French arrives in Montréal or Brussels to find speech that looks quite different on the lips.
E caduc and schwa deletion
- Common short syllables disappear entirely
- In fast French, the unstressed /ə/ (e caduc or schwa) is deleted in many syllables: 'je ne sais pas' becomes 'j'sais pas', 'il y a' becomes 'y'a'. At a Paris Metro desk or an immigration counter, whole syllables that appear in careful French simply disappear at natural speaking pace — leaving a deaf traveler with a shortened stream that looks nothing like the French they practiced.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreHearing loss and travel accessibility in France
France has one of Europe's larger hearing-impaired populations. According to a study published in JAMA Network Open drawing on the French CONSTANCES cohort, disabling hearing loss prevalence is estimated between 8.6% and 11.2% of the overall population. A 2022 survey found that 25% of French adults are affected by hearing loss to some degree — approximately 16 million people. As of 2014, around 360,000 French people had very serious or total hearing loss, defined as being unable to follow a multi-person conversation. Of those with severe hearing loss in France, only 37% wear a hearing aid, one of the lowest hearing aid adoption rates in Europe.
France's travel infrastructure — Charles de Gaulle, one of Europe's busiest airports, the SNCF TGV and Intercités network, and the Paris Metro — communicates critical information primarily through spoken French PA. While visual departure boards exist at major stations, short-notice announcements (voie changes, retards, correspondances) are delivered by PA and may be spoken before visual displays are updated. For deaf and hard of hearing travelers at Gare du Nord or CDG Terminal 2, real-time captioning at gate counters and platform level is not standardised. French cued speech (la Langue française Parlée Complétée — LPC) has been used to support deaf children but has limited presence in travel and public service settings.
Captio AI captions French speech in real time — whether a TGV platform announcement at Gare de Lyon, a customs officer at CDG, or a hotel receptionist in Lyon — so a deaf traveler in France follows every instruction and exchange 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
"TGV platform announcements at Gare de Lyon are fast and the hall is loud. I would scan the departure board and hope nothing had changed. Captio AI captions the spoken announcement in real time — including the voie number before the board updates."
"French customs at CDG speak quickly and formally. I pointed Captio AI at the officer and read every question on screen. I answered correctly and walked through without confusion — the border crossing no longer fills me with dread."
"Parisian French sounds very different from Québécois on the lips. Hotel receptionists and tour guides in Paris use liaison and fast elision that I struggle to follow. Captio AI captions Parisian French accurately. The Louvre guide came through clearly."
"Belgian French and Metropolitan French are different in vowels and rhythm. Captio AI handled both perfectly when I traveled from Brussels to Paris. Every train announcement, every hotel conversation — readable on screen."
"TGV platform announcements at Gare de Lyon are fast and the hall is loud. I would scan the departure board and hope nothing had changed. Captio AI captions the spoken announcement in real time — including the voie number before the board updates."
"French customs at CDG speak quickly and formally. I pointed Captio AI at the officer and read every question on screen. I answered correctly and walked through without confusion — the border crossing no longer fills me with dread."
"Parisian French sounds very different from Québécois on the lips. Hotel receptionists and tour guides in Paris use liaison and fast elision that I struggle to follow. Captio AI captions Parisian French accurately. The Louvre guide came through clearly."
"Belgian French and Metropolitan French are different in vowels and rhythm. Captio AI handled both perfectly when I traveled from Brussels to Paris. Every train announcement, every hotel conversation — readable on screen."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Navigate confidently in French.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store