Online classes and meetings now come with live captions — and when the speaker isn’t using your language, those captions are the difference between following along and being lost. Capture2Text (free, open-source, portable Windows OCR by Christopher Brochtrup) can grab those captions off your screen and run them through translation, giving you a readable, savable record of what was said.
Setup: capture + translate
- Turn on captions in your meeting app first. Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet all have built-in live captions. Capture2Text reads pixels, so it needs visible text to grab.
- Set the OCR language to the spoken language (tray icon → OCR Language). English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish are built in; 90+ more are available as language packs from the download page.
- Enable translation in Capture2Text settings and pick your target language. Note: translation goes through Google Translate, so it needs an internet connection — fine for an online meeting.
- Send output to the clipboard (Settings → Output) so each capture is one paste away from your notes.
The capture loop
- When an important line appears in the caption bar, press Win+Q and drag over the caption area.
- The translated text lands in your clipboard — paste it into your notes (a doc, Notion, whatever you use).
- Repeat for key points. By the end of the call you have a translated minutes-of-meeting built line by line.
Honest limitations
- Captions scroll and vanish. Capture2Text captures what’s on screen at one moment — there is no automatic scrolling capture. Miss a line, it’s gone; grab the lines that matter.
- This is manual, not a live subtitle overlay. If your meeting app offers built-in translated captions, use those for real-time understanding and use Capture2Text for archiving the lines you want to keep.
- Fast speakers + small caption fonts = errors. Enlarge the caption text in your meeting app’s accessibility settings before the call starts.
FAQ
Which meeting apps does this work with?
Any app that shows captions as on-screen text: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet all have built-in live captions. Capture2Text reads pixels, so it works regardless of which app renders the text.
Can Capture2Text translate captions automatically as they appear?
No — there is no automatic scrolling or continuous capture. You press Win+Q to capture the caption line currently on screen, and the translation goes to your clipboard. It is a manual archiving workflow, not a live subtitle overlay.
Does translation work offline?
No. OCR itself works offline, but the translate feature sends text through Google Translate and needs an internet connection — which an online meeting has by definition.
What if my meeting app already offers translated captions?
Use them. Built-in translated captions are better for real-time understanding. Use Capture2Text alongside for the lines you want to save — paste them into your notes as a translated record of the call.