Meeting translator for in-person and hybrid meetings

How to set it up

1. 1
   Open Tingdong, pick “Live Subtitles”, source “Room only”

   Put the Mac in the middle of the table, or use any microphone you select in System Settings → Sound → Input. In a hybrid meeting, with some people joining on Teams, Zoom or Meet on the same Mac, choose “Room + Mac audio” so Tingdong hears the room and the call together.

2. 2
   Press Start when the meeting begins

   Subtitles appear while the sentence is still being spoken, the original and the translation together, each voice labelled — Speaker 2, Speaker 3. Tingdong detects the language by itself and follows someone who switches mid-sentence.

3. 3
   On a Mac, for the whole table, click “Big-screen subtitles”

   The subtitles fill the meeting-room TV, a projector or a second display in large type on a dark background, with nothing else on screen; press Esc to leave. If you would rather listen than read, turn on “Read aloud” and hear the translation in your language.

Where to put the Mac in a meeting room

Recognition can only be as good as what the microphone hears, so where the Mac sits matters more than any setting. At a table for four to six, a MacBook in the middle hears everyone; at a long boardroom table, put it near the people whose language you need, or plug in a USB conference microphone and select it in System Settings → Sound → Input. Overlapping voices are the hard part: Tingdong labels each voice, but words spoken over each other can end up under one label, so a meeting where people take turns reads more clearly. The audio is sent live for recognition and translation and is not stored; the transcript is saved only on your Mac. For a talk or a class, see live translation for lectures; for a meeting you only join online, Teams and Zoom.

Frequently asked questions