Transcription · Dzongkha
Dzongkha transcription services
Native Dzongkha 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 Dzongkha language service: transcripts, subtitles, voice over, and translation of any content you need.
About Dzongkha transcription
Where Dzongkha is spoken and how it is written
Dzongkha has around 171,000 native speakers and around 640,000 speakers in total. The native figure is a minority by design: Dzongkha is a compulsory school subject, so most Bhutanese speak it as a second language.
Dzongkha has been the sole national language of Bhutan since 1971, with a dialect base in the west of the country. It is standardised by the Dzongkha Development Commission, established by royal decree in 1986, which publishes dictionaries, coins new terms and has the authority to codify new spellings. Roman Dzongkha was approved by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1997 and adopted by BGN/PCGN in 2010.
At GoLocalise, we work with professional Dzongkha 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 Dzongkha transcript
Dzongkha, 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 Dzongkha 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 Dzongkha 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 Dzongkha transcription
A written record is a compliance requirement in some sectors and an accessibility one in others. These are the Dzongkha 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 Dzongkha audio
Dzongkha 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 Dzongkha 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.
Dzongkha specifics
A Dzongkha transcript can read impeccably and still be wrong, because Dzongkha spelling records history rather than sound
Dzongkha is written in Tibetan script with an orthography that specialists describe as largely historical, so that the rationale underlying much of Dzongkha spelling is comparable to that of English words like laugh, ewe and knife. There is no systematic one-to-one correspondence between traditional Dzongkha orthography and modern pronunciation.
A transcriber therefore cannot write down what was heard. Each word has to be matched to a stored spelling that contains prefixed and suffixed letters no longer pronounced, and even the BGN/PCGN romanisation agreement concedes that suffixes are romanised or not romanised based on local pronunciation.
Two further decisions sit on top of this. Whether the file is delivered in uchen script or in Roman Dzongkha, which are different documents rather than different fonts — Roman Dzongkha was never intended to replace traditional Bhutanese writing, but to represent the phonology of the living language. And which register the speaker used, since the honorific system, zhesa, replaces ordinary words with separate lexemes.
A recording may also contain passages of Chöke, Classical Tibetan, which stands to Dzongkha roughly as Latin once stood to medieval French.
Transcription rates
Professional Dzongkha transcription
Best for clean read transcripts of corporate video, interviews and internal communications.
- Native Dzongkha 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
- Dzongkha 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.
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What happens after the transcript
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Most common questions
Should the transcript be delivered in Tibetan script or in Roman Dzongkha?
They are different deliverables and the choice has to be made before work starts. Uchen script is the form used in Bhutanese publishing and government documents; Roman Dzongkha was approved in 1997 as a phonological standard and was never meant to replace the traditional script. If the transcript will feed a pronunciation-sensitive process, Roman Dzongkha carries information the uchen spelling does not.
Why can't the spelling simply follow the pronunciation?
Because Dzongkha orthography is historical. Words carry prefixed and suffixed letters that stopped being pronounced long ago, and there is no systematic one-to-one correspondence between the traditional spelling and modern speech. The transcriber recognises the word and retrieves its established spelling; a phonetic guess produces a form no Dzongkha reader will accept.
What is the honorific register and why does it change the text?
Dzongkha has a zhesa register in which many everyday words are replaced by separate lexemes — 'sit' and 'mind' become different words entirely when a social superior is involved. The register a speaker chose is audible and meaningful, and flattening it into ordinary vocabulary removes the record of who was being addressed and how. This matters most in interviews, ceremonial recordings and anything involving monastic or official speakers.
How will the finished Dzongkha 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 Dzongkha 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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