ScribeToAny
Languages

Transcribe Japanese Audio

Japanese transcription is notoriously slow to do by hand thanks to kanji conversion. ScribeToAny outputs natural mixed kanji-kana text directly from speech — for anime clips, business meetings, interviews and language study.

  • AI transcription
  • 98 Languages
  • Encrypted; we never train AI on your files

Start with your recording

Drop an audio or video file here, or click to choose.

What you get: a real transcript

Unedited output from a 64-second interview with two speakers (synthetic voices), transcribed with speaker detection on. Only the first lines are shown.

Transcript (TXT)
SPEAKER_00 (0:00) Welcome back to Small Shop Stories.
SPEAKER_00 (0:02) Today I'm talking to Maya, who runs a tiny bakery on the
SPEAKER_00 (0:05) corner of Mill Street.
SPEAKER_01 (0:07) Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01 (0:08) It's really small, just two ovens and a counter.
SPEAKER_00 (0:12) So how does a normal day start for you?
Subtitles (SRT)
1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,680
[SPEAKER_00] Welcome back to Small Shop Stories.

2
00:00:02,160 --> 00:00:05,320
[SPEAKER_00] Today I'm talking to Maya, who runs a tiny bakery on the

3
00:00:05,320 --> 00:00:06,320
[SPEAKER_00] corner of Mill Street.

Checked against the script, 4 of 189 words differed — a 2.1% word error rate, counting "80" written for "eighty" as an error — and all 14 speaker turns were labelled correctly. This was clean speech; noisy recordings and people talking over each other score lower. See the full transcript and how it was scored

How it works

  1. 1

    Upload

    Drop in an audio or video file, or paste a link. All common formats are accepted.

  2. 2

    Transcribe

    AI transcribes with timestamps and optional speaker labels, usually in minutes.

  3. 3

    Export

    Edit segments online, then export TXT, SRT, VTT, TSV, CSV, JSON, PDF or DOCX.

Why ScribeToAny

  • Kanji & Kana: Natural mixed kanji-kana writing, as a native speaker would type it — rare names and homophones may still need a check.
  • Keigo as Spoken: Sonkeigo, kenjōgo and teineigo forms stay in the transcript rather than being normalised.
  • Loanwords & Acronyms: Katakana loanwords and English acronyms are recognised; new jargon and product names may need a check.
  • Japanese-Sized Subtitles: Cues are capped at about 32 characters and broken at 。 and 、 — sized for Japanese reading, not Latin line lengths.

Frequently asked questions

Is the output in kanji or kana?

Natural mixed writing, as a native speaker would type it — kanji where appropriate, kana elsewhere.

Can it help with Japanese study?

Very much — transcribe listening material, read along with click-to-play audio, and export text for flashcards.

Does it subtitle Japanese videos?

Yes, export SRT or VTT with aligned timing.

Should I choose Japanese or leave Auto-detect on?

If you know the recording is Japanese, pick 日本語 under Audio language. Auto-detect decides from roughly the first 30 seconds, so a file that opens with music, silence or an English intro can be read as another language — choosing the language skips that guess. Anime clips that open with a theme song are the classic case where picking the language helps.

How are Japanese subtitles split into lines?

Japanese cues are capped at about 32 characters — roughly two lines of 16 — instead of the 84 used for English, and breaks prefer 。 and 、 so a caption doesn't stop mid-phrase. Because Japanese has no spaces, this matters more than it does for English. Any cue that still reads awkwardly can be split in the editor.

Related tools