Transcription · Czech
Czech transcription services
Native Czech transcribers for legal proceedings, corporate meetings, broadcast, market research and academic interviews — with a clear answer, agreed before we start, to the question every Czech recording raises: do you want what was said, or standard Czech?
About Czech transcription
Find the right Czech transcription for your project
Czech is the official language of the Czech Republic and an official language of the European Union, with a written standard — spisovná čeština — maintained by the Czech Language Institute of the Academy of Sciences. What most people in Bohemia actually speak, in meetings, interviews and everyday conversation, is something measurably different: Common Czech, obecná čeština, a non-standard variety with its own sound changes and endings that turn up in almost every sentence.
The differences are systematic. Nový becomes novej, malé město becomes malý město, on becomes von, cestami becomes cestama. So a transcriber has a decision to make before typing a word: write what was said, which is faithful but looks "wrong" to a reader who was not warned, or bring it to the written standard, which reads cleanly but is no longer a record. Courts and researchers need one; market reports and publications usually need the other.
At GoLocalise, we work with native Czech transcribers who make that call with you rather than by habit, and a project manager who stays across every step — from speaker identification through to proofreading, time-coding and delivery.
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 wordRecords every spoken detail, including pauses, filler words, repetitions and hesitations, exactly as they occur — and, for Czech, the non-standard forms as spoken.
Best for
Legal proceedings, sociolinguistic research, disciplinary hearings
Edited
Clean readRemoves redundant words and hesitations while keeping the meaning and the speaker's intent fully intact.
Best for
Interviews for publication, broadcast material, content to be translated
Summarised
Key pointsCondenses the discussion into structured key points rather than a full record of the conversation.
Best for
Meeting minutes, focus-group reporting, internal documentation
What's included
What comes with every Czech transcript
Register agreed and stated
Common Czech as spoken, or standard Czech on the page — decided at the brief and noted on the transcript, so nobody mistakes one for the other.
The written-only rules applied
Ú versus ů, i versus y after ambiguous consonants: distinctions the audio cannot supply, resolved from the word rather than the sound.
Terminology consistent
Legal, technical and brand terms held to one form across the file and to your glossary where you have one.
Timecodes
Stamped at the interval you need — per speaker turn, per paragraph or at fixed intervals.
Speaker identification
Every turn attributed, by name where you supply them or by role where you don't.
Your format
Word, PDF, plain text, Excel or a subtitle-ready file — 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.
Brief review
We review your audio, the subject matter, any speaker lists and your target output — and agree whether the page carries Common Czech or the standard.
Transcriber assignment
We match your project to a native Czech transcriber with the right subject expertise, whether legal, corporate, media or research.
Transcription & quality check
The transcript is produced and checked against the source audio, with the agreed register, speaker labels and timestamps applied.
Delivery
Clean, time-coded transcripts in your chosen format, on budget and on time.
Tell us whether anyone will ever need to prove what was said. If yes, the transcript keeps the Common Czech forms. If it is a step towards a report or a publication, standard Czech serves better — and we will still keep the original if you want both.
Who we work with
Industries that rely on Czech transcription
The Czech Republic is a manufacturing, shared-services and research hub, which shapes the recordings we receive. These are the briefs we see most.
Corporate & shared services
Board meetings, HR interviews, quality recordings and training from Prague and Brno operations.
Legal
Hearings, statements and case material, transcribed verbatim and formatted to requirement.
Manufacturing & engineering
Supplier meetings, audits and technical reviews across the automotive and engineering sectors.
Market research
Focus groups and in-depth interviews, where Common Czech is what people actually speak.
Broadcast & media
News, documentary and interview material with subtitle-ready templates.
Academic & EU bodies
Field interviews, oral histories, committee sessions and programme evaluations.
Confidentiality
Who hears your Czech audio
Czech transcription frequently means HR proceedings, legal statements or research interviews recorded with people who agreed to be recorded on particular terms. 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 Czech 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.
Czech specifics
Czechs speak one Czech and write another. A transcript has to pick a side, and say so.
The written standard, spisovná čeština, is what Czech schools teach, newspapers print and institutions require. The variety most people in Bohemia use when they talk is Common Czech — obecná čeština — and it is not slang or carelessness but a non-standard variety with rules of its own, rooted in central Bohemia and spread through Prague and the media. Its markers are everywhere: long ý becomes ej (novej kabát), long é becomes ý or í (malý město, polívka), a v appears before initial o (von, vodnese), the instrumental plural takes -ma (cestama), a final -l drops (přines). In a two-hour focus group, thousands of words carry one of these forms.
That leaves the transcriber holding a decision on every line. Write what was said, and the document is a faithful record — the right thing for a court, a disciplinary hearing, a linguist, anyone who may later need to quote a speaker's exact words — but it looks, to a reader expecting standard Czech, as though the transcriber could not spell. Bring it to the standard, and the document reads cleanly and serves a report, an article or a translation, but it is no longer what anyone said, and a speaker's register, class and region have been quietly erased. Neither is wrong. Doing one when the client needed the other is. We settle it at the brief, state it on the first page, and can supply both versions where a project needs the record and the readable text.
Underneath that decision sit the rules that hold whichever way you go — the ones the audio cannot help with. Czech has two letters for the same long u sound: ú at the start of a word, after a prefix and in loanwords (úl, neúcta, múza); ů inside and at the end of native words (dům, průmysl, stromů). Nothing in the recording tells you which; the transcriber has to know the word. The same goes for i and y after the consonants where the two sound identical. These are the errors that mark a document as produced by someone who typed what they heard, and they are exactly what a second-linguist pass catches.
Transcription rates
Professional Czech transcription
Best for single-speaker interviews, dictation and short corporate content.
- Native Czech transcriber
- Verbatim or clean read
- Speaker identification
- Proofreading pass
A complete managed service for legal material, HR proceedings, research corpora and anything that has to stand as a faithful record.
- Everything in Standard
- Register agreed and stated on the document
- Timecodes and speaker IDs
- Second-linguist orthography check
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.
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Most common questions
What is Common Czech, and why does it matter for a transcript?
Common Czech — obecná čeština — is the non-standard variety most people in Bohemia speak in everyday situations, including meetings and interviews. It differs from the written standard systematically: novej for nový, malý město for malé město, von for on, cestama for cestami. A transcript can either keep those forms, as a faithful record, or convert them to standard Czech, as a readable document. They are different products and we agree which you need before we start.
Which should we choose?
If anyone might ever need to show exactly what a speaker said — a court, a tribunal, an HR process, a researcher — keep it as spoken. If the transcript is a step towards a report, an article, a translation or a subtitle file, standard Czech usually serves better. Where a project needs both, we deliver a verbatim version and a standardised one.
Our speakers are from Moravia. Is it different?
Somewhat. Common Czech is a Bohemian phenomenon; Moravian speech tends to sit closer to the standard in some respects and to have its own regional forms in others. The decision is the same — record or readable — and we brief the transcriber on what to expect from the region.
What are the errors you check for that the audio cannot resolve?
Mainly ú versus ů and i versus y. Czech writes the same long u sound two ways depending on position and origin — ú at the start of a word, after a prefix and in loanwords; ů inside and at the end of native words — and writes i or y after certain consonants by rule rather than by sound. Neither can be heard. They are the mistakes that expose a transcript typed by ear, and the proofreading pass is built to catch them.
Can a Slovak transcriber cover Czech?
Slovak and Czech are mutually intelligible, and a Slovak speaker will follow the audio without trouble. Producing correct written Czech is another matter — the Common Czech forms, the ú/ů and i/y rules and the vocabulary are all different — so for a document that has to read as Czech we assign native Czech transcribers.
How quickly can a Czech transcription project be delivered?
Most short projects are delivered within 24 to 48 hours, but the exact turnaround depends on audio length, audio quality, the number of speakers and whether time-coding is required. Your project manager will confirm the timeline at the start.
Why not run Czech audio through an automated tool?
Because it makes the register decision for you, silently and inconsistently: it will standardise some Common Czech forms and leave others, so the output is neither a record nor a clean text. It also has no way to resolve ú/ů or i/y except by guessing. The correction pass ends up longer than transcribing natively.
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.
What formats do you deliver Czech transcripts in?
Word, PDF, plain text, Excel or a subtitle-ready file, with timecodes and speaker labels where you need them. Tell us what the transcript is for and we will deliver it in the format the next step requires.
Ready to transcribe your Czech audio?
Send us the files and tell us whether you need the record or the readable version — we'll come back with an exact, itemised quote.
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