On November 10, 2026, Otter.ai announced it is expanding meeting transcription to 31 languages, adding 27 at once: 13 are available immediately and the remaining 14 arrive later. More notable than the count is a new capability: when a speaker switches languages in the middle of a meeting, Otter follows automatically — no manual switching, no need to start a new recording.
13 now, 14 to follow
The 13 available now are Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Korean, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Dutch, Turkish, Vietnamese and Polish; the 14 coming later include Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Hebrew, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Greek, Macedonian, Persian, Czech, Hungarian and Romanian. According to TechCrunch's November 10 report, the languages run on Otter's own speech models, trained on publicly available datasets with native-speaking volunteers reviewing transcripts for accuracy. A meeting that moves from English to Korean to Portuguese stays in one continuous record.
It removes the most annoying step before a meeting
For global teams, this update removes the most annoying step before a meeting: no need to confirm in advance which language everyone will speak, no separate meeting per language — the notes are a single, complete multilingual record. Otter, which raised $320 million from General Catalyst in October, is expanding from transcription into workplace AI tools, having rolled out Work Mode for meeting prep and Live Assist for real-time suggestions during calls; the multilingual expansion fills another gap in the same product line.
Two things still need real-world testing
Two things still need real-world testing: first, no date has been given for the remaining 14 languages; second, transcription accuracy in mixed-language meetings — volunteer review by native speakers is one thing, accents, interruptions and background noise in real meetings are another. Anyone considering a switch can compare free tiers in our earlier guide first — How to choose an AI meeting notes tool: Fathom, Otter and Fireflies free tiers compared.
