Why Kalima asks which languages are spoken, and locks them in

You read through a transcript and one paragraph makes no sense. The words are almost right, but spelled as if they belonged to another language. Someone with a strong accent spoke for a minute, and the recognition decided it was hearing Dutch instead of German, or Portuguese instead of Spanish.

That kind of error has one root cause: recognition that is free to pick any of 60 languages has 59 ways to be wrong. Most meetings use one or two languages, and you know which ones before anybody speaks. So Kalima now asks, and holds recognition to your answer.

The padlock next to your languages

When you set up a session, a padlock sits next to the languages you picked. While it is closed, recognition is restricted to those languages, up to three of them. It still switches between them freely, mid-sentence if someone does, and labels every switch in the transcript. It just cannot wander off into a language nobody in the room speaks.

This is the largest accuracy gain you can make with a single setting:

• No passages in the wrong language. The candidates are the languages you named, nothing else.
• Accents hold up better. A strong accent no longer tips the recognition into a neighbouring language, because that language is not on the list.
• Short phrases land. A two-word answer is hard to place on its own. Among two candidates it is easy.

The restriction applies to live recordings and to uploaded files alike.

Every new session starts locked

The padlock is closed by default, and every new session starts that way, with your saved default languages already filled in. If you opened it for one session, that choice stays with that session. The next one starts locked again.

Set your defaults once under Settings › Transcription › Default language hints. If your meetings are usually in German with some English, put both there, and every new session is ready.

Why three

One language gives the best result, and most sessions need exactly one. Two cover the bilingual meeting that is normal in many international teams. Three cover the meeting where a third language comes up regularly, a Swiss team with German, French and English, for example.

Beyond three, the restriction loses what makes it useful: more candidates means more room for exactly the confusion it is meant to prevent. So if you pick a fourth language while the padlock is closed, Kalima asks which of the three it should replace.

When to open the padlock

Sometimes you really do not know what will be spoken: a public talk with questions from an international audience, a recording someone sent you without context. Then click the padlock. Kalima asks you to confirm, because the transcript gets noticeably less accurate without the restriction, and suggests adding the extra language instead if you know it.

While the restriction is lifted, the padlock and the line beside it turn amber and the accuracy meter drops, so you can see at a glance that this session is running without it.

Three habits for clean multilingual transcripts

1. Name only the languages that are really there. A language nobody speaks is one more wrong candidate at every unclear moment.
2. Put terms in the context, not in the language list. A product name or a surname belongs in the session context. The languages answer "which language", the context answers "which words".
3. Set your defaults once. Most people record in the same one or two languages. Saving them as defaults means you never start a session with the wrong set.

For meetings that mix languages throughout, our post on multilingual meeting transcription goes deeper, and the Languages & Detection guide covers every detail of the padlock.