Transcription · Tetun Dili
Tetun Dili transcription services
Native Tetun Dili 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 Tetun Dili language service: transcripts, subtitles, voice over, and translation of any content you need.
About Tetun Dili transcription
Where Tetun Dili is spoken and how it is written
Tetun Dili, also called Tetun Prasa, had around 385,000 native speakers, 36.6% of the population, at Timor-Leste's 2010 census, and is understood far more widely as the country's lingua franca.
Tetun has been an official language of Timor-Leste alongside Portuguese since independence in 2002, having been proclaimed official under the United Nations administration in 1999. The written standard is set by the Instituto Nacional de Linguística.
At GoLocalise, we work with professional Tetun Dili 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 Tetun Dili transcript
Tetun Dili, 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 Tetun Dili 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 Tetun Dili 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 Tetun Dili transcription
A written record is a compliance requirement in some sectors and an accessibility one in others. These are the Tetun Dili 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 Tetun Dili audio
Tetun Dili 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 Tetun Dili 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.
Tetun Dili specifics
A Tetun transcript can read impeccably and still be wrong, because much of what is said is not Tetun, and each borrowed word has more than one possible spelling
Tetun Dili is a heavily contact-shaped variety. Published counts put Portuguese as the source of 52% of 9,400 nouns and 42% of 2,500 verbs, with roughly a third of all word tokens in press Tetun coming from Portuguese.
Numbers behave the same way: native Tetun numerals are used mainly for small quantities such as ages, times and the number of children, while dates, prices and arithmetic are much more often given in Portuguese or Indonesian.
Every one of those words forces a spelling decision, because the national orthography adapts loans to Tetun spelling conventions while much writing retains Portuguese source spellings, and competing forms such as bainhira and wainhira for 'when' remain in circulation. Indonesian adds a further layer, supplying grammatical calques rather than surface vocabulary, so it shapes sentences that contain no obviously Indonesian words.
Underneath all of this sits the question of which variety the recording is in at all: Tetun Dili holds ISO 639-3 `tdt` and Tetun Terik `tet`, and the older variety uses different word choice, less foreign influence and distinct verb conjugation.
Transcription rates
Professional Tetun Dili transcription
Best for clean read transcripts of corporate video, interviews and internal communications.
- Native Tetun Dili 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
- Tetun Dili 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
If half the words are Portuguese, is this really a Tetun transcript?
Yes — that mixture is what Tetun Dili is. Portuguese supplies 52% of nouns and 42% of verbs in the documented lexicon, and around a third of word tokens in press Tetun. The transcriber's task is not to strip those words out but to spell them consistently, since the national orthography adapts loans to Tetun conventions while a great deal of real-world writing keeps the Portuguese source spelling.
Which language will the numbers, dates and prices appear in?
Often not Tetun. Native Tetun numerals are used mainly for small quantities such as ages, times and the number of children in a family, while dates, prices and arithmetic are much more often given in Portuguese or Indonesian. This is a decision to settle before work starts, because it affects every figure in the file.
What is the difference between Tetun Dili and Tetun Terik?
Tetun Dili, also called Tetun Prasa, is the urban variety that became the official language, shaped by long contact with Portuguese. Tetun Terik, spoken in the south and south-west, uses different word choice, carries less foreign influence and conjugates verbs differently. They hold separate ISO 639-3 codes, tdt and tet, and a recording in Tetun Terik is transcribed to different conventions.
How will the finished Tetun Dili 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 Tetun Dili 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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