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Taiwanese works too

Taiwanese voice typing — speak Taiwanese, let 聆打 type it out in Chinese characters

Most voice typing tools only really handle Mandarin — speak Taiwanese and they often don't understand, garble the characters, or just don't offer it as an option at all. 聆打 Linda includes Taiwanese (Hokkien) as one of its cloud recognition languages, so you can speak Taiwanese and have it typed straight out in Chinese characters — no switching input methods, no translating to Mandarin in your head first. Our own testing found it "pretty good", but it also has clear limits (all listed below) — better to be upfront about that. Ready to try it? Start at Download & install.

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Let's be upfront first. First, Taiwanese recognition genuinely works — our own testing found it "pretty good" — but it doesn't reach Mandarin-level accuracy: heavy accents, fast speech and a lot of proper nouns will noticeably widen the gap. Second, on-device recognition (offline) doesn't support Taiwanese — speaking Taiwanese always needs a network connection through the cloud, and it won't work in airplane mode. Third, what comes out is written in Chinese characters, not Tâi-lô romanization or Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ) — there's no romanization output. Fourth, there is no Taiwanese interface: the website has 11 interface languages to switch between, and the app interface is currently Traditional Chinese only — "Taiwanese" here means "speech it can recognize", not an interface language. Also, we currently only support Taiwanese (Hokkien) — not Hakka, and not any Indigenous language.

Why Taiwanese voice recognition is so hard to build

Taiwanese (Hokkien) has no single standard way of writing it in Chinese characters — the same sound often maps to several different possible characters, and accents like Quanzhou and Zhangzhou vary enough that the same sentence sounds different depending on who's saying it.

Most mainstream speech recognition engines have mostly been trained on Mandarin and a handful of other major languages. Taiwanese has far less training data to begin with, plus wide accent variation, so the voice input built into most phones — or common speech-to-text tools — barely treat Taiwanese as a real option, usually either failing to understand it or forcing Mandarin logic onto it and garbling the result.

That's why 聆打 has deliberately made Taiwanese a priority recognition language, and why every limitation below is spelled out honestly: there's no such thing as "perfect" here, and being upfront about what works and what doesn't is more useful than pretending otherwise.

How 聆打 handles Taiwanese

Check "Taiwanese (閩南語)" under "Recognition language" in settings (available on both Windows and Android, where you can select from 12 languages), then speak Taiwanese into the microphone — the system sends the audio to the cloud for recognition and types it out in Chinese characters.

Like every other language, 聆打 isn't an input method. The Windows app pastes the text from the clipboard into wherever your cursor is (falling back to typing it out character by character if the clipboard isn't available); the Android app uses the accessibility service to write it into whichever app's text field you're currently in, without affecting your existing Zhuyin or Cangjie input — the two can be used side by side.

Your computer and phone share the same account and the same personal dictionary, and one account can bind up to 5 devices.

Let's be honest: current limits of Taiwanese support

Worth knowing these upfront, so it doesn't feel oversold once you start using it:

  • Taiwanese only works through the cloud. Android's "on-device recognition (offline)" uses the phone's built-in offline speech model, and Taiwanese isn't on that language list, so in airplane mode or without a network connection, Taiwanese voice typing simply doesn't work — it needs an internet connection.
  • Output is in Chinese characters. Not Tâi-lô romanization, and not Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ); there's currently no romanization conversion, and no mapping to the Ministry of Education's recommended characters.
  • Accuracy isn't guaranteed to match Mandarin. Our own testing found it "pretty good", but Taiwanese naturally has far less training data than Mandarin and wider accent variation, so heavy accents, fast speech and a lot of proper nouns will show a noticeable gap in accuracy.
  • There's no Taiwanese interface. The website has 11 interface languages to switch between, and the app interface is currently Traditional Chinese only; "Taiwanese" here means "speech it can recognize", not an "interface language".
  • Only Taiwanese (Hokkien) is supported. Not Hakka, and not any Indigenous language.

Where it fits well

Taiwanese is the most natural way many older adults and people working in local communities express themselves. 聆打 can turn "spoken Taiwanese" into a first-draft text, for example: interviewing elders for family oral histories, field research for community and local-revitalization work, borough wardens recording resident complaints on the spot, temple elders recounting temple history and paperwork, master craftsmen dictating their working methods, notes from caregivers or family handing off long-term care instructions in Taiwanese, and traditional trades (factories, market stalls) that naturally communicate work instructions in Taiwanese.

Worth noting: all of this is best treated as a draft or an aid. For formal documents or important temple records, always review and correct the recognized text yourself — don't send it out as a finished product without checking it.

Mixing Taiwanese and Mandarin in the same sentence

Switching between Taiwanese and Mandarin mid-conversation is extremely common in daily life. 聆打's "Recognition language" field is multi-select, so you can check both "Taiwanese (閩南語)" and "Mandarin" together to cover the range of languages you actually use.

But to be honest: this isn't a guarantee of "automatically and precisely detecting and switching language sentence by sentence". Recognition stability when mixing languages is naturally more sensitive than speaking a single language start to finish. If a word gets misheard or confused, the personal dictionary can help correct it, same as usual.

Personal dictionary for proper nouns: names, places, temples

Taiwanese names of people, places and temples are especially prone to being misheard as similar-sounding characters. Add the proper nouns you use often to your "personal dictionary", and 聆打's own homophone-correction system (a deterministic pinyin match, not something handed off to an AI to guess) will consult it first during recognition.

This isn't a list of forced output — words you never said won't show up out of nowhere; it's only consulted when the system genuinely hits a homophone and needs to decide between a few possible characters. The dictionary has a total limit of 500 characters, and it syncs between Windows, Android and the website member center.

There's also a handy Windows setting: turn on "Preview text, then confirm before typing", and after each recognition a window pops up letting you check it first. Once you correct a misheard word to what you meant, the system automatically learns that correction into your dictionary and syncs it to your other devices, so it remembers the next time it hears that same sound.

How Taiwanese works with polishing mode

"Output style" (verbatim / polished) is a separate toggle from the recognition language, and the rule doesn't change when it's Taiwanese: polishing only tidies up "how it's said" — dropping filler words like "um" and "uh", smoothing word order, adding a missing subject — without adding anything you didn't actually say. To keep the original Taiwanese phrasing and wording exactly as spoken, switch to "verbatim", which only strips out filler sounds and filler words.

Note that Android's "on-device recognition (offline) + polishing turned off" combination can keep both voice and text on the device, but that combination doesn't apply to Taiwanese — offline recognition doesn't support Taiwanese, so speaking Taiwanese always goes through the cloud, and polishing itself also needs a network connection to run.

How to get started

Five steps:

  1. Get the Windows or Android version from the download page — currently free during the beta period. The Windows app isn't code-signed yet, so the first time you run it, SmartScreen shows an "unknown publisher" warning — that's normal, click "More info" then "Run anyway" to continue.
  2. Sign up or log in and bind your account. 聆打 needs to be bound before it can be used — there's no "download and it just works" here.
  3. Go to settings and check "Taiwanese (閩南語)" under "Recognition language" — you can check it alongside Mandarin or other languages too.
  4. Speak Taiwanese into the microphone and wait a few seconds for the text to appear; if something gets misheard, add your preferred wording to your personal dictionary.
  5. New sign-ups get a 7-day full trial, no credit card required, with up to 100 recognitions a day during the trial; after that it's NT$300 a month and up, cheaper the longer you commit. Billing works as "top up first, deducted automatically each month", not a credit-card auto-renewal — stop topping up and it ends naturally, with no cancellation process and no penalty. See Pricing for exact amounts.

Taiwanese voice typing FAQ

Does 聆打 support Taiwanese voice typing?
Yes. Check "Taiwanese (閩南語)" under "Recognition language" in settings, and speaking Taiwanese gets recognized and typed out in Chinese characters — this is one of the features 聆打 has deliberately invested in.
Is Taiwanese voice typing as accurate as Mandarin?
We can't promise that. Our own testing found Taiwanese recognition "pretty good", but Taiwanese naturally has less training data than Mandarin and wider accent variation (Quanzhou, Zhangzhou and so on), so accuracy varies with accent, speaking speed and how many proper nouns are involved — we don't claim it matches Mandarin-level accuracy. If something gets misheard, the personal dictionary can help correct it.
Can I use Taiwanese voice typing offline?
No. Android's "on-device recognition (offline)" language list doesn't include Taiwanese, so speaking Taiwanese always needs a network connection through the cloud; the Windows app does all recognition in the cloud regardless of language, so it also always needs a network connection.
Does the recognized text come out as Tâi-lô romanization or Chinese characters?
Chinese characters. 聆打's Taiwanese recognition outputs Chinese characters, not Tâi-lô romanization and not Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ); there's currently no romanization conversion, and no mapping to the Ministry of Education's recommended characters.
Is there a Taiwanese interface? Can I switch the whole app to display in Taiwanese?
No. The website has 11 interface languages to switch between, and the app interface is currently Traditional Chinese only — neither offers a "Taiwanese interface" option. In 聆打, "Taiwanese" refers to speech it can recognize, not an interface language.
Can I mix Taiwanese and Mandarin in the same sentence?
Yes, the recognition language field is multi-select — check both Taiwanese (閩南語) and Mandarin to cover the languages you use. But recognition stability when mixing languages is naturally more sensitive than speaking one language start to finish; if a word gets misheard, adding it to your personal dictionary can help correct it, same as usual.
Names of people, places and temples keep getting misheard — what do I do?
Add the proper nouns you use often to your "personal dictionary" — the system consults it first when correcting homophones. It's not a list of forced output; words you never said won't appear out of nowhere, and it's only consulted when the system genuinely hits a homophone and needs to decide between characters. The dictionary has a total limit of 500 characters. Windows' "preview text" mode can also automatically learn your corrections into the dictionary and sync them to your other devices.
Can I use it for Taiwanese interview transcripts or field research notes?
You can use it as a drafting tool, but keep in mind cloud recognition caps a single recording at 120 seconds (2 minutes), so a long interview needs to be recorded in multiple segments. There's also no speaker separation or multi-person meeting transcription — recognized text from a conversation with several people still needs you to organize it into paragraphs and mark who said what yourself.
Does Taiwanese voice typing support Hakka or Indigenous languages?
No. 聆打's current Taiwanese feature only covers Taiwanese (Hokkien) — there's no Hakka recognition and no Indigenous language recognition.
Do I need to pay extra to use Taiwanese voice typing?
No extra purchase needed. Taiwanese is one of 聆打's 12 recognition languages, included in the same plan as everything else. New sign-ups get a 7-day full trial (no credit card, up to 100 recognitions a day during the trial), then NT$300 a month and up. Billing works as top up first, deducted automatically each month — not a credit-card auto-renewal — so it stops naturally if you don't top up, with no penalty. See Pricing for exact amounts.
Does Taiwanese voice typing work on both Windows and Android?
Yes, both include Taiwanese (閩南語) as a selectable recognition language. The difference is that Android also has an "on-device recognition (offline)" toggle, but that offline feature doesn't support Taiwanese — so whether you're on Windows or Android, speaking Taiwanese always goes through cloud recognition.
Does Taiwanese voice typing keep a record of what I say?
No transcripts are kept by default. This has nothing to do with which language you speak — 聆打 doesn't retain recordings or transcripts by default, regardless of language; full details are in the Privacy policy.

Have more questions? The full Q&A is at FAQ, pricing and billing details are on Pricing, and install steps are on Download & install.

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