How to Set Up Live Translation for Microsoft Teams in 3 Easy Steps

You're preparing for a Teams meeting with international colleagues. The discussion will switch between English, Japanese, or another language—and you need to follow along without constantly asking "Can you repeat that?" Real-time translation is the answer, but setting it up in Teams isn't always straightforward.

This guide walks you through enabling live translation in Microsoft Teams step by step, explains what the native features can and can't do, and helps you decide when a dedicated translation app without bot might serve you better.

How Microsoft Teams Translation Works

Teams offers several ways to bridge language gaps during meetings. Understanding your options helps you choose the right approach.

Live Captions with Translation display real-time transcription of spoken words, translated into your preferred language. The captions appear at the bottom of your screen—visible only to you, not other participants.

Interpreter Agent is a newer AI-powered feature that goes beyond captions. It creates a translated audio track that speaks the translation aloud, mimicking the original speaker's voice characteristics. Think of it as having an AI interpreter in your ear.

Multilingual Speech Recognition (MSR) automatically detects when speakers switch languages mid-conversation, ensuring captions and transcripts stay accurate regardless of which language someone is speaking.

The catch? These features require specific Microsoft 365 licenses. Basic Teams accounts only get same-language captions—no translation.

Step 1: Check Your License and Enable Admin Settings

Before you can use translated captions, your organization's Teams administrator needs to enable the feature.

For IT Administrators:

1. Open the Microsoft Teams admin center
2. Navigate to Meetings > Meeting policies
3. Select the policy that applies to your users (or create a new one)
4. Find Live captions and set it to "Off, but users can turn on" or "On for everyone"
5. Save the policy changes

If you don't have admin access, contact your IT department to confirm that live captions are enabled for your account.

Verify Your License:

Translated captions require the meeting organizer to have one of these licenses:

• Teams Premium ($10/user/month) — Adds translated captions for up to 50 languages
• Microsoft 365 Copilot ($30/user/month) — Includes Interpreter Agent with AI voice translation

Standard Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard, or Premium plans include live captions but not translation. You'll see your own language transcribed but won't have the option to translate to another language.

Step 2: Enable Live Captions During a Meeting

Once admin settings are in place, turning on captions takes just a few clicks.

During your Teams meeting:

1. Click the More actions button (three dots "...") in your meeting controls
2. Select Language and speech > Turn on live captions
3. Captions will appear at the bottom of your meeting window

At this point, you're seeing same-language transcription. The spoken words appear as text, but they're not yet translated.

Step 3: Set Your Translation Language

Now comes the translation part.

To translate captions to your preferred language:

1. With captions already on, click the More actions button again
2. Go to Language and speech > Caption settings
3. Find Translate captions and toggle it On
4. Select your desired translation language from the dropdown
5. Captions will now display in your chosen language

You can change this setting at any time during the meeting without disrupting others. The translated captions appear only on your screen.

For Town Halls and Live Events:

If you're organizing a webinar or live event, you can pre-configure translated captions for attendees:

1. Open your scheduled event in Teams Calendar
2. Click Meeting options
3. Under Translate attendee captions, select which languages to make available
4. Participants can then choose their preferred translation during the event

What Teams Translation Does Well

Microsoft has invested heavily in making translation accessible within its ecosystem. Here's where the native features shine:

No additional software required. If your organization already uses Microsoft 365, you're working within familiar tools. There's nothing new to install or configure on individual devices.

Invisible to other participants. Your caption and translation settings are personal. Other attendees don't see that you're using translation—useful for maintaining a natural conversation flow.

Improving accuracy. Microsoft's AI models have improved substantially, particularly for common language pairs like English-Spanish, English-French, and English-Japanese. The Interpreter Agent, powered by neural speech synthesis, delivers increasingly natural-sounding translations.

Integrated experience. Everything happens within the Teams interface you already know, reducing context-switching and learning curves.

Limitations to Consider

Teams translation is convenient, but it has real constraints that may affect your decision.

License costs add up quickly. Translated captions require Teams Premium at minimum—$10/user/month on top of your existing Microsoft 365 subscription. For organizations with hundreds or thousands of employees, this adds significant expense, especially if only some team members regularly need translation.

Only works inside Teams. If a client prefers Zoom or your partner uses Google Meet, Teams translation won't help. You'll need a separate solution for those conversations.

No custom terminology support. Teams doesn't let you register company names, product names, or industry jargon. Proper nouns and specialized terms often get mistranslated, which can cause confusion in technical or business discussions.

Interpreter Agent has narrow language support. While translated captions support 50+ languages, the AI voice translation (Interpreter Agent) currently works with only 9 languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Caption-only display. Translations appear within Teams' interface, making it difficult to see translated text while sharing your screen or using other applications.

No post-meeting translation. Meeting recordings include transcripts, but those transcripts won't be in your translated language—only the original spoken language.

When to Consider an Alternative

Teams' native translation works well for occasional cross-language meetings where participants all use Teams. But several scenarios call for a different approach.

You work across multiple platforms. If your meetings split between Zoom, Teams, Meet, and others, managing translation settings for each platform becomes tedious. A platform-agnostic tool provides consistency regardless of where the meeting happens.

You need botless operation for client calls. Some translation tools add a "bot" participant to meetings to capture audio. This can make clients uncomfortable or violate organizational policies. If discretion matters, you need a solution that works invisibly.

Your industry uses specialized terminology. Legal, medical, financial, and technical fields have vocabulary that generic translation models struggle with. Custom dictionaries—unavailable in Teams—significantly improve accuracy for these terms.

You want translation AND meeting notes. Following a foreign-language conversation while also taking notes is cognitively exhausting. Tools that combine real-time translation with automatic note-taking let you focus on understanding rather than documenting.

SuperIntern: A Better Alternative for Professional Settings

SuperIntern approaches meeting translation differently. Instead of integrating with one platform, it runs as a resident application on your Mac, capturing audio directly from your speakers and microphone. No bot joins your call. Other participants have no idea you're using translation assistance.

Why teams choose SuperIntern over native Teams translation:

• Platform-agnostic — Works with Teams, Zoom, Meet, Webex, or any audio source including in-person meetings
• No bot presence — Captures audio invisibly; no "AI Notetaker" appearing in participant lists
• Custom dictionary — Register company names, product names, and technical terms to improve accuracy
• 50+ languages with translation optimized for business contexts
• Real-time structured notes — Automatically generates organized meeting notes as the conversation happens
• Flexible language settings — Set different languages for subtitles vs. summaries (e.g., Japanese audio → Japanese + English subtitles → English summary)

SuperIntern is currently available for Mac, with Windows support in development. If you're a Windows user interested in early access, join the waitlist.

Pricing: Free trial available; paid plans start at $20/month including 50 hours of meeting time.

👉 Try SuperIntern Free — No Credit Card Required

Quick Comparison: Teams Native vs. SuperIntern

Getting Started

If you're deciding between Teams native translation and a dedicated tool, here's a practical approach:

Start with Teams if you meet these criteria:

• Your organization already has Teams Premium or M365 Copilot
• Most of your multilingual meetings happen within Teams
• You don't need specialized terminology support
• Translation is needed by just a few team members

Consider SuperIntern if:

• You meet with people across different platforms (Teams, Zoom, Meet)
• You need translation for external meetings where bot presence matters
• Your work involves specialized vocabulary or proper nouns
• You want both translation and automatic meeting notes
• You prefer a consistent experience regardless of meeting tool

Test both if possible. Teams' translated captions are already available if you have the right license—try them in a real meeting. SuperIntern offers a free trial without a credit card, so you can compare accuracy and workflow fit before committing.

👉 Try SuperIntern Free

Whatever you choose, the goal is the same: removing language barriers so you can focus on the conversation, not the technology.