Transcription · Setswana
Setswana transcription services
Native Setswana 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 Setswana language service: transcripts, subtitles, voice over, and translation of any content you need.
About Setswana transcription
Where Setswana is spoken and how it is written
Setswana is spoken by around 8 million people. In South Africa it was the language of 8.3% of the population at the 2022 census, with 72.8% of those in North West province; in Botswana, 77.5% of households gave Setswana as the household language at the 2022 census.
There are two separate standard-setting bodies. Botswana works from its Standard Orthography of 1981 and Mokwalo o o Lolameng wa Setswana of 2008; South Africa works from the Setswana National Language Body under PanSALB, which published Setswana Melawana ya Mokwalo le Mopeleto in 2019.
At GoLocalise, we work with professional Setswana 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 Setswana transcript
Setswana, 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 Setswana 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 Setswana 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 Setswana transcription
A written record is a compliance requirement in some sectors and an accessibility one in others. These are the Setswana 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 Setswana audio
Setswana 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 Setswana 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.
Setswana specifics
A Setswana transcript can read impeccably and still be wrong, because in Setswana the spaces carry the grammar
Setswana uses a disjunctive orthography: where the Nguni languages such as Zulu join affixes to the root, the Sotho languages write the prefixes of the verb disjunctively.
The practical effect is that a single verb is spread across several units separated by spaces, so a sentence like Batho ba boile maabane contains four orthographic words but only three linguistic ones. Deciding where those spaces fall is a grammatical judgement about which morphemes belong to which verb, made while listening to connected speech in which no such gaps are audible.
Two tones, high and low, are phonemic and distinguish both words and grammatical forms, yet standard orthography leaves them unmarked — go bua is both 'to speak' and 'to skin an animal' — and the 2019 South African rules treat tone diacritics as belonging to scholarly texts.
On top of that, Botswana and South Africa maintain separate written standards, so the target country is a specification rather than a detail.
Transcription rates
Professional Setswana transcription
Best for clean read transcripts of corporate video, interviews and internal communications.
- Native Setswana 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
- Setswana 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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Native transcribers for interviews, meetings, research, media and legal material. Browse another language, or ask us about yours.
Most common questions
Why is word division a decision in Setswana rather than a formality?
Setswana is written disjunctively, so the prefixes of a verb are generally written as separate units with spaces between them. One verb can therefore occupy several orthographic words, and Batho ba boile maabane is four written words but three linguistic ones. Connected speech contains no audible gaps, so the transcriber places the spaces by analysing the grammar, and misplacing them changes which morphemes are read as belonging to which verb.
Setswana has tone. Does the transcript show it?
Standard orthography does not mark it, even though high and low are phonemic and distinguish both vocabulary and grammatical forms. Go bua is written identically whether it means 'to speak' or 'to skin an animal'. The 2019 South African rules reserve tone diacritics for scholarly and technical work, so if you need tone marked, that is specified in advance rather than assumed.
Does it matter whether the transcript is for Botswana or South Africa?
Yes. Botswana works from its Standard Orthography of 1981 and the 2008 Mokwalo o o Lolameng wa Setswana; South Africa works from the rules issued by the Setswana National Language Body under PanSALB, most recently in 2019. These are two separate written standards maintained by two separate bodies, so the target readership is part of the brief.
How will the finished Setswana 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 Setswana 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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