Transcription · Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin Chinese transcription services
Native Mandarin Chinese transcribers for corporate video, eLearning, legal proceedings and more. Verbatim and clean read transcripts, time-coded and delivered to professional and legal standards. Part of a full Mandarin Chinese language service: transcripts, subtitles, voice over, and translation of any content you need.
About Mandarin Chinese transcription
Where Mandarin Chinese is spoken and how it is written
Mandarin Chinese is spoken by around 1.1 billion people worldwide, of whom around 900 million are native speakers. It is the standard spoken language of mainland China, where it is known as Pǔtōnghuà, of Taiwan, where it is Guóyǔ, and one of the four official languages of Singapore, where it is Huáyǔ.
Mainland China's National Common Language and Writing Law, in force since 1 January 2001, designates Putonghua and standardised simplified characters as the national norm; in Taiwan the Ministry of Education regulates Guoyu and the Development of National Languages Act of 2019 recognises the country's other national languages alongside it.
At GoLocalise, we work with professional Mandarin Chinese transcribers who are native speakers, and we manage every step — file intake and brief, transcription, time-coding, formatting and final delivery — so the transcript you receive is accurate to the audio and ready for its intended use.
Choose your format
Three ways to transcribe the same recording
The right one depends on what the transcript is for. If you are not sure, tell us the use case and we will recommend it.
Full verbatim
Every wordCaptures every utterance, pause and non-standard pronunciation exactly as spoken, including false starts and overlap.
Best for
Legal proceedings, research interviews, compliance content
Clean read
EditedRemoves filler words, false starts and repeated phrases for readability, while keeping meaning and speaker intent intact.
Best for
Corporate video, interviews for publication, content to be translated
Summarised
Key pointsCondenses the discussion into structured key points rather than a full record of the conversation.
Best for
Executive briefings, legal summaries, research documentation
What's included
What comes with every Mandarin Chinese transcript
Mandarin Chinese, English, or both
A source transcript, an English translation, or the two side by side. The translation is produced from the original audio, not from the transcript alone.
Timecodes
Stamped at the interval you need — per speaker turn, per paragraph or at fixed intervals, matched to your edit or subtitle workflow.
Speaker identification
Every turn attributed, by name where you supply them or by role where you don't — including through overlap.
Proofreading pass
A second native Mandarin Chinese linguist reads the transcript against the audio before it reaches you.
Terminology kept
Legal, medical or technical vocabulary rendered to the convention your sector uses, not paraphrased.
Your format
Plain text, Word, PDF, SRT, VTT or a client-specific template — tell us the next step.
How it works
One project manager, from brief to delivery
A structured workflow, built so accuracy and confidentiality are verified at each stage rather than assumed at the end.
File intake and brief
We review your audio or video, confirm the transcript type (verbatim, clean read, time-coded), and note any terminology, speaker labels or formatting you need.
Transcriber assignment
We match your content to a native Mandarin Chinese transcriber with the right background, whether legal, medical, corporate or media.
Transcription and QA
The transcriber works directly from your files. A second linguist reviews the transcript against the audio for accuracy, speaker identification and consistency.
Delivery
Formatted transcripts in your chosen format, whether plain text, SRT, VTT or a client-specific template, on budget and on time.
For multi-speaker research, hearings or archive projects, we assign a coordinated team and agree milestones up front.
Who we work with
Industries that rely on Mandarin Chinese transcription
A written record is a compliance requirement in some sectors and an accessibility one in others. These are the Mandarin Chinese briefs we see most.
Legal & compliance
Hearings, depositions and arbitration, transcribed verbatim and formatted to requirement.
Automotive & electronics
Technical briefings, supplier negotiations and training material.
Broadcast & media
Interviews, documentaries and archive footage, with subtitle-ready templates.
Market research
Focus groups and interviews, including sessions with heavy speaker overlap.
Business & shared services
Client calls, process documentation and training material.
Academic & research
Lectures, field interviews and research material.
Confidentiality
Who hears your Mandarin Chinese audio
Mandarin Chinese transcription often means board material from a head office in the head office, arbitration, pre-release production audio or research interviews recorded on the understanding they stay private. So who hears it matters as much as how accurately it is captured.
Your files are uploaded through an encrypted system, handled by a named Mandarin Chinese transcriber under NDA, and never fed into public speech-to-text tools. We will sign your own confidentiality agreement, follow your retention rules, and delete everything on delivery if your policy requires it.
Encrypted upload
No loose files over email.
NDA as standard
Yours or ours, before we start.
No public AI tools
Your audio never trains anything.
Deletion on request
Files removed on delivery if you need it.
Mandarin Chinese specifics
A Mandarin transcript can read perfectly and still be wrong, because converting it between simplified and traditional characters is not reversible
Mandarin is a spoken language; simplified and traditional are scripts, and the script is a delivery decision made per market rather than a property of the recording.
The catch is that the two scripts are not in one-to-one correspondence. Simplification merged distinct characters into single forms, so 发 stands for both 發 'to emit' and 髮 'hair', 干 for 乾 'dry', 幹 'trunk' and 干, 后 for 後 'behind' and 后 'empress', and 面 for 麵 'noodles' and 面 'face'. Any procedure that converts between the two systems without reading context will make mistakes, and some of those mistakes are wrong in a way a reader will notice.
The standards diverge lexically as well: the same object is 軟體 in Taiwan and 软件 on the mainland, 網路 against 网络, 列印 against 打印.
The script and the regional standard have to be fixed before transcription, not patched on afterwards by running the file through a converter.
Chinese is not one spoken language with one script, and the two questions are separate. Mandarin and Cantonese are the spoken languages; simplified and traditional are the scripts. What decides the script is the market the transcript is for:
Mainland China — Mandarin spoken, delivered in simplified. Taiwan — Mandarin spoken, delivered in traditional. Hong Kong — Cantonese spoken, delivered in traditional. Singapore — Mandarin spoken, delivered in simplified.
So tell us two things: which language is on the recording, and which market the transcript is for. Those two answers fix the deliverable. A brief that says only "Chinese" does not.
Transcription rates
Professional Mandarin Chinese transcription
Best for clean read transcripts of corporate video, interviews and internal communications.
- Native Mandarin Chinese transcriber
- Verbatim or clean read
- Speaker identification
- Proofreading pass
A complete managed service for legal proceedings, multi-speaker research and longer-form content requiring verbatim, time-coded or translated deliverables.
- Everything in Standard
- Subject-specialist linguist
- Timecodes and speaker IDs
- Mandarin Chinese and English in one pass
Priced by runtime, audio quality, number of speakers and turnaround, and backed by our Price Match Promise. Send us a sample for an exact, no-obligation quote.
Trusted by global brands
We have used GoLocalise on a regular basis for projects in a number of languages. The service we receive is great. The team is always friendly and professional. The voiceovers we receive are of a very high quality and the turnaround is extremely quick. We are very happy to recommend GoLocalise to other businesses.
It was a pleasure to work with David and the team at GoLocalise. David gave me lots of help and advice, guiding me through my first subtitling project. He really knows his stuff! The experience was completely pain-free. I would not hesitate to recommend GoLocalise – outstanding work at a good price.
They're reliable, adaptive and obsessed with quality. And while you can never be 100% guaranteed of perfection, you can be sure GoLocalise will go the extra mile to get it right every time. We've worked with them now for over 5 years and we are truly thankful to have such a strong localisation partner for our business.
Related services
What happens after the transcript
Transcription in more languages
Native transcribers for interviews, meetings, research, media and legal material. Browse another language, or ask us about yours.
Most common questions
Should we order "simplified Chinese" or "traditional Chinese" transcription?
Neither, as stated. What is transcribed is a spoken language — Mandarin or Cantonese — and the script is chosen afterwards for the market: simplified for mainland China and Singapore, traditional for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Tell us the language of the audio and the market the transcript is for, and both questions are answered.
Can you just convert our simplified transcript to traditional?
It can be done, but not safely by machine alone. Several traditional characters were merged into one simplified character, so 发, 干, 后, 里 and 面 each map to more than one traditional form, and the correct choice depends on the sentence. A converted file needs a reviewer who reads the context, and the same applies to vocabulary that differs between the mainland and Taiwan standards.
Our recording is from Taiwan. Is that still Mandarin?
Yes. Taiwanese Mandarin, known locally as Guoyu, is the same language as Putonghua and is regulated by Taiwan's Ministry of Education, but it is written in traditional characters and differs in everyday vocabulary. Some Taiwanese recordings also contain Taiwanese Hokkien, which is a separate language and needs a transcriber who speaks it.
How will the finished Mandarin Chinese transcript be delivered?
In whatever the next step needs: plain text, Word, PDF, SRT, VTT or your own template, with timecodes and speaker labels set the way you want them. Tell us what happens to the transcript after we send it and we format it for that, not for us.
Is my audio kept confidential?
Yes. Files are uploaded through an encrypted system, handled by a named transcriber under NDA, and never fed into public speech-to-text tools. We can sign your own confidentiality agreement, work to your retention rules and delete everything on delivery.
How much does transcription cost?
Every file is quoted on its own terms. Runtime, audio quality, how many people are speaking, the turnaround you need and whether you also want a translation all move the figure, so there is no flat per-minute rate that would be honest across all of them. Send us a sample and we will come back with an exact, itemised number, backed by our Price Match Promise.
How quickly can you deliver?
Most short files come back within 24 to 48 hours. Length, audio quality and whether you need time-coding or full verbatim all affect it, and a large multi-speaker project is scheduled rather than rushed. Your project manager confirms the timeline before work starts, not after.
Ready to transcribe your Mandarin Chinese audio?
Send us the files and tell us where the transcript will end up — we'll come back with an exact, itemised quote.
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Voice over
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Translation
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Subtitling
- Experienced subtitlers
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Transcription
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