Transcription · Flemish
Flemish transcription services
Native Flemish transcribers for legal proceedings, corporate meetings, broadcast, market research and academic interviews recorded in Belgium — where what people actually say is rarely standard Dutch, and how it goes on the page is a decision, not an accident.
About Flemish transcription
Find the right Flemish transcription for your project
Flemish is the Dutch of Belgium — the same written language as in the Netherlands, governed by the same Nederlandse Taalunie and the same spelling. What differs is what comes out of people's mouths. Across Flanders, the everyday spoken variety is tussentaal, the "in-between language": not dialect, not the standard, but a supra-regional colloquial Dutch with grammar of its own that research shows gaining ground in every Flemish region.
Its markers are unmistakable: ge and gij where the standard has je and jij (Gaat ge mee?, or run together, Gade mee?); the diminutive -ke (boekske); dropped final -t (wa, da, nie); the article ne (ne man); double negation (da weet niemand nie). Every interview, focus group and meeting in Flanders is full of it. A transcriber can write it as spoken, which is faithful and looks startling to a Dutch reader, or convert it to Standaardnederlands, which reads cleanly and is no longer what anyone said.
At GoLocalise, we work with native Flemish transcribers who put that choice to you rather than making it by reflex, and who know which Belgian vocabulary the Taalunie itself recognises as standard — 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 — including the tussentaal forms.
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 Flemish transcript
Tussentaal: kept or standardised, stated
Ge, gij, -ke and ne written as spoken, or rendered into Standaardnederlands — agreed at the brief and noted on the transcript.
Belgian standard vocabulary respected
Words the Taalunie labels standard in Belgium stay; they are not "corrected" to Netherlands usage.
Official spelling
Whichever register you choose, spelled to the Woordenlijst Nederlandse Taal, which binds Flemish public bodies as it does Dutch ones.
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 tussentaal goes on the page as spoken or as standard Dutch.
Transcriber assignment
We match your project to a native Flemish 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 and for drift between registers, with speaker labels and timestamps applied.
Delivery
Clean, time-coded transcripts in your chosen format, on budget and on time.
Tell us who will read the transcript and where. A Flemish court and a Flemish marketing team want different things from the same recording, and a reader in the Netherlands wants a third.
Who we work with
Industries that rely on Flemish transcription
Belgium's institutions, its port and pharmaceutical economies and its media generate a lot of recorded Flemish. These are the briefs we see most.
Legal
Court hearings, arbitration and witness statements, transcribed verbatim and formatted to requirement.
Government & EU bodies
Flemish Parliament, municipal and EU-related sessions held in Dutch in Belgium.
Pharma & life sciences
Advisory boards, patient interviews and regulatory meetings from one of Europe's densest pharma clusters.
Market research
Focus groups and in-depth interviews, where tussentaal is what participants actually speak.
Broadcast & media
News, documentary and interview material with subtitle-ready templates.
Corporate & logistics
Board meetings, training and internal communications for companies operating in Flanders.
Confidentiality
Who hears your Flemish audio
Flemish transcription frequently means legal proceedings, patient interviews or research recordings 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 Flemish 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.
Flemish specifics
Flanders writes standard Dutch and speaks tussentaal. The transcript has to know which one it is.
Ask a Flemish speaker to write and they will produce Standaardnederlands, spelled to the same Woordenlijst that binds the Netherlands. Record them talking — in a meeting, a focus group, a witness interview — and what you get is tussentaal, the supra-regional colloquial variety, Brabantian at its core, that linguists at Ghent and elsewhere have documented spreading through every Flemish region. It has its own grammar. The second person is ge/gij, not je/jij: Gaat ge mee?, and in speech usually Gade mee?. Diminutives take -ke (boekske, stukske). Final -t drops from function words (wa, da, nie). The indefinite article surfaces as ne or nen (ne man, nen auto). Negation doubles (da weet niemand nie), and dat appears where the standard has none (waar dat hij woont). None of this is careless; it is how Flemish is spoken.
So the transcriber faces a decision on every line, and it is not theirs to make. Kept as spoken, the transcript is a faithful record — what a court, a tribunal, a sociolinguist or anyone who may later quote the speaker needs — and it will look, to a reader from the Netherlands, like a foreign document. Brought to the standard, it reads as clean Dutch and serves a report, an article, a translation or subtitles, but the ge has become je and the speaker's register has been quietly rewritten. We put the question to you at the brief, write the answer on the document, and check in proofreading for the drift that happens when a transcriber starts standard and slides into speech as the recording warms up.
One thing does not get "corrected" either way: Belgian standard vocabulary. The Taalunie's own advice service labels certain words standaardtaal in België — standard Dutch as used in Belgian public life, in administration, courts, education and media — and a transcript for a Flemish reader keeps them. Plezant, for instance, is standard in Belgium alongside the pan-Dutch fijn and leuk; other Belgian favourites the Taalunie leaves undecided, and we keep those too when the speaker used them. A transcriber from the Netherlands, or a tool trained on Netherlands text, will flatten all of it into northern usage and call it a fix. It is not a fix. It is the reason Flemish work goes to Flemish transcribers.
Transcription rates
Professional Flemish transcription
Best for single-speaker interviews, dictation and short corporate content.
- Native Flemish transcriber
- Verbatim or clean read
- Speaker identification
- Proofreading pass
A complete managed service for legal material, multi-speaker meetings, research corpora and anything that has to stand as a faithful record.
- Everything in Standard
- Register fixed and checked for drift
- Timecodes and speaker IDs
- Belgian standard vocabulary preserved
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 tussentaal, and why does it matter for a transcript?
Tussentaal is the colloquial Dutch most people in Flanders actually speak: not dialect, not the standard, but a supra-regional variety with its own grammar — ge and gij for you, diminutives in -ke, dropped final t, the article ne, double negation. It is what every Flemish interview and meeting is full of. A transcript can keep it as spoken, as a faithful record, or convert it to standard Dutch, as a readable document. They are different products, and we agree which you need before starting.
Which should we choose?
If anyone may need to show exactly what a speaker said — a court, a tribunal, an HR process, a researcher — keep it as spoken. If the transcript feeds a report, an article, a translation or subtitles, or will be read in the Netherlands, standard Dutch usually serves better. Where a project needs both, we deliver a verbatim version and a standardised one.
Isn't Flemish just Dutch? Why a separate service?
The written language is the same and so is the spelling authority. The spoken language is not: tussentaal is the norm in Flanders and rare in the Netherlands, and Belgium has vocabulary that the Taalunie itself recognises as standard there. A transcriber from the Netherlands will treat both as errors and "fix" them. Our Flemish transcribers know the difference between a Belgian standard word and a mistake.
What do you mean by Belgian standard vocabulary?
Words the Taalunie's advice service labels standaardtaal in België — standard Dutch as used in Belgian administration, courts, education and media. Plezant is one example: standard in Belgium, alongside fijn and leuk, which are standard everywhere. We keep such words as spoken rather than replacing them with Netherlands equivalents.
The recording mixes Dutch and French. Can you handle it?
Yes. Brussels and many Belgian organisations are bilingual and switches are normal. We transcribe both, mark each switch, and can translate one into the other if the document has to be read in a single language.
How quickly can a Flemish 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 Flemish audio through an automated tool?
Because such tools are trained overwhelmingly on Netherlands Dutch. They standardise tussentaal inconsistently — ge becomes je in one sentence and stays in the next — and flatten Belgian vocabulary to northern forms. The result is neither a record nor clean Dutch, and 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 Flemish 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 Flemish audio?
Send us the files and tell us who will read the transcript — we'll come back with an exact, itemised quote.
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