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Arabic lecture transcription for students and lecturers

Upload a lecture recording and get it in writing, with a time on every passage, so you search for a term instead of listening to two hours again. For students who record their lectures and for lecturers who want a transcript or subtitles on their recorded classes.

Get StarterGet BasicSee the output
  • Speakers detected automatically
  • Word-level timestamps
  • Word, SRT, VTT, TXT, JSON and CSV

Included in every paid plan, from $1/month (Basic, Starter, Creator, Professional, Business and Enterprise)from $4.99/month (Starter, Creator, Professional, Business and Enterprise). Not available on the Free plan.

See the workflow

A real transcript and its translation

Speaker 1Speaker 2Detected: English
0:00 / 0:36

Transcript

Real output, unedited · voices by Vocla
Two-speaker clips voiced with Vocla library voices, uploaded and transcribed by Vocla with language and speakers on auto. Lines, speakers, word timings and the translation are exactly as returned.

What you get

Examples of what you get

An excerpt from a lecture transcript, a terms list prepared before transcribing, and subtitle cues for a recorded class. The content is invented for illustration.

  • Sample 1

    Excerpt from an economics lecture

    Modern Standard Arabic

    [00:18:40] المتحدث 1: نعرّف مرونة الطلب السعرية بأنها مقدار استجابة الكمية المطلوبة للتغير في السعر. [00:18:52] المتحدث 1: فإذا ارتفع السعر قليلًا وانخفضت الكمية كثيرًا قلنا إن الطلب مرن. [00:19:03] المتحدث 2: وهل ينطبق ذلك على السلع الضرورية يا دكتور؟

    Speaker 1: "We define price elasticity of demand as how much the quantity demanded responds to a change in price. If the price rises a little and the quantity falls a lot, we say demand is elastic." Speaker 2: "And does that apply to essential goods, professor?" The lecturer and the student asking appear as two speakers you can rename.

  • Sample 2

    Terms list for a biology lecture

    Modern Standard Arabic

    الميتوكوندريا، الريبوسوم، الانقسام المتساوي، الانقسام المنصف، الحمض النووي الريبوزي، ATP، DNA، mRNA، غشاء الخلية، الشبكة الإندوبلازمية

    Mitochondria, ribosome, mitosis, meiosis, ribonucleic acid, ATP, DNA, mRNA, cell membrane, endoplasmic reticulum. Paste it into the names-and-terms field before starting, with abbreviations in Latin letters.

  • Sample 3

    SRT cues from a recorded programming class

    Egyptian Arabic

    14 | 00:03:21,400 --> 00:03:25,900 | دلوقتي هنعمل متغيّر جديد ونسمّيه total. 15 | 00:03:26,100 --> 00:03:30,300 | لو كتبت الاسم غلط البرنامج مش هيشتغل، فركّز في الحروف.

    Cue 14: "Now we'll create a new variable and call it total." Cue 15: "If you type the name wrong the program won't run, so watch the letters." Each cue has a number and start and end times, and the lecturer's words are written in the dialect he spoke.

The problem

A two-hour recording and an exam in three days

You record the lecture on your phone because the professor explains faster than you can write.

  1. Then twenty audio files pile up with names that mean nothing, and when revision starts you remember that one law was explained "in some lecture in week five", with no way to reach it except listening.

  2. Typing it out by hand is not realistic. One hour of speech takes an untrained typist several hours, and that time comes straight out of the revision itself.

  3. Lecturers have their own side of the problem: recorded classes uploaded to the university platform with no transcript and no subtitles, so students cannot search them, and they are hard to follow for hard-of-hearing students and for anyone studying in a second language.

Why Vocla

Why Vocla suits lecture transcription

  • Text you can search

    Once the lecture is transcribed, type a term into search and every place it was mentioned appears. Click any line to hear the lecturer's explanation from that moment and confirm what was written.

  • A list for technical terms

    Names of laws, scientists, compounds and foreign terms go into the names-and-terms list before you start, which makes them more likely to be recognised and written with the spelling your textbook uses.

  • Arabic and English in the same lecture hall

    Many lectures in medicine, engineering and computing are explained in Arabic with English terminology. You choose the language and dialect of the explanation, and English words inside the speech are written down.

  • Subtitles for the recorded class

    For lecturers: the same transcript exports as an SRT or VTT file with timings, ready to upload with the video to the platform you use, or the subtitles can be burned into the video with AI captions.

  • Exports that fit how you study

    A Word file with right-to-left paragraphs to highlight and annotate, or plain text to paste into your notes app. Timestamps can be shown or hidden.

How it works

From a lecture hall recording to revision text

  1. Step 1

    Check the recording's length before uploading

    Each plan has a limit on the length of a single file. If the lecture is longer than your plan allows, split the recording in two at the break with any audio editor and upload each part separately.

  2. Step 2

    Write down the lecture's terms first

    Open the lecture slides or the chapter's contents page and copy ten to twenty terms and names into the list. That minute saves you from correcting the same word again and again.

  3. Step 3

    Set the language and dialect, then start

    Choose Arabic, and Modern Standard Arabic if the lecturer sticks to it, or their dialect if they teach in colloquial speech. The text is usually ready within minutes, depending on the file's length.

  4. Step 4

    Review against the slides, not your memory

    Go through the text with the slides open and correct equations, figures and names. Transcripts come without tashkeel and punctuation inside a line can be sparse, so split long passages.

  5. Step 5

    Export and add the text to your notes

    Download the Word file and put the lecture's title and date at the top. You write the summary and flashcards from the text; the tool does not generate summaries.

Cost

What does a lecture cost, and how long can the file be?

Transcription is available on paid plans and costs 150 credits per started minute of the recording, so a lecture's cost follows its length directly and is shown before you start. If the transcript fails, the credits go back to your account.

The per-file limit is what matters for long lectures: 30 minutes on Starter at $4.99 a month, 120 minutes on Professional and 300 minutes on Business. A lecture longer than your limit is split in two, and the total cost barely changes because billing is per minute.

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The numbers

Quick maths

Worked example: a 45-minute recording is 6,750 credits, or 9,450 with translation.

  • Not available on the Free plan; included in every paid plan.
  • Transcription costs 150 credits per started minute of audio, shown before you start and refunded if the transcript fails.
  • Translating the transcript adds 60 credits per minute.
  • Longest file: 30 minutes on Starter, 120 on Professional and 300 on Business.

Figures use the current plans and default credit rates. The exact cost is always shown in the app before you confirm.

Questions people ask

How do I transcribe a lecture recorded on my phone?

Move the recording off your phone as it is and upload it to speech to text in Vocla, then choose Arabic and the lecturer's dialect and add the subject's terms. The text appears after a few minutes with timestamps; review it and download a Word file or plain text.

Can it transcribe a two-hour lecture?

It depends on the plan: the limit per file is 30 minutes on Starter, 120 minutes on Professional and 300 minutes on Business, with a size of up to 500 MB. Split a lecture longer than your limit into parts and upload each part on its own.

I recorded from the back of the hall. Will it work?

It will if you can understand the lecturer by ear, with a less accurate result than a close recording. Echo and classmates talking drop words and confuse speakers, and errors increase with colloquial speech. Try a short section of the recording first and judge before transcribing the whole lecture.

Does it spell English technical terms correctly?

English words inside an Arabic explanation are written down, but specialised terms and names are what need the most checking. Add them to the names-and-terms list before starting, then use find and replace to fix any error that repeats across the file.

Does it summarise the lecture or pull out key points?

No. You get the full text of the lecture as it was spoken, with times and speakers, and no automatic summary. You write the summary yourself, and having the text makes that easier, because you read, highlight and search instead of listening again.

I am a lecturer. How do I add subtitles to my recorded lectures?

Upload the lecture video and review the transcript, then export an SRT or VTT file and upload it with the video to your university platform if it accepts subtitle files. Or use AI captions to burn the text into the picture for an extra 30 credits per minute.

Go deeper

The broader use case

Related solutions

Other pages for a neighbouring job.

All solutions

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  • Arabic and English interface