---
title: "Chinese Speech to Text: Speak Mandarin, Get Characters and Pinyin | Mandarin The Wild"
description: "Free Chinese speech to text online: speak Mandarin and see it written in Chinese characters with tone-coloured pinyin over every word, and tap any word for its meaning. Simplified or traditional, no sign-up."
canonical: "https://mandarinthewild.com/chinese-speech-to-text"
author: "Mandarin The Wild"
---

Free tool · No sign-up

# Chinese speech to text

Speak Mandarin and see it written, with pinyin over every word.

Characters

What you say shows here.

## How does Chinese speech to text work?

Press Speak and talk in Mandarin. Your browser’s speech recognition writes what it hears in Chinese characters, a sentence at a time, and our reader splits each sentence into words and puts the pinyin over them, in tone colours. Tap or hover any word for its meaning. Press Speak again to stop.

## Simplified or traditional characters?

Choose 简体 for simplified characters (Mandarin as spoken in mainland China) or 繁體 for traditional (Mandarin as spoken in Taiwan) before you speak.

## Can it turn an audio file or a video into text?

Yes, in [Immersion](https://mandarinthewild.com/immersion): add the recording and press Make a transcript. You get the whole recording written out with pinyin and every word explained, and it reads along as it plays. It needs a free account, since the transcript is kept with the recording. For a YouTube video, our [browser extension](https://mandarinthewild.com/extension) writes captions for videos that have none.

## Which browsers can it listen in?

Chrome, Edge and Safari, on a computer or a phone. Firefox has no speech recognition, so it can’t listen there.

## Where does my voice go?

To your browser’s speech service: Chrome sends it to Google and Edge to Microsoft to be recognised; Safari uses Apple’s. We receive only the text it heard, to add the pinyin, and keep nothing.

## More free tools

- [Pronunciation checker](https://mandarinthewild.com/chinese-pronunciation-checker)
- [Chinese text to speech](https://mandarinthewild.com/chinese-text-to-speech)
- [Pinyin converter](https://mandarinthewild.com/pinyin-converter)
- [Handwriting input](https://mandarinthewild.com/chinese-handwriting-input)
- [Dictation practice](https://mandarinthewild.com/chinese-dictation)

Speech recognition is your browser’s; the words and their pinyin are read by our own reader.