Real-time captioning and translation in PowerPoint

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Real-time captions for a PowerPoint presentation

In PowerPoint, you can caption your presentation in real time, so while you’re giving a presentation and speaking, PowerPoint subtitles your speech on the screen. You can choose both the spoken language and the subtitle language. In other words, you can translate your speech from English into Finnish, for example.

Open PowerPoint online from the Microsoft 365 home page https://www.office.com/ or open then desktop version of PowerPoint.

Open the PowerPoint presentation you’re presenting.

In PowerPoint, go to the Slide Show tab and select Always use subtitles.

From the list, select the spoken language, that is, the language in which you will hold the presentation and the language of the subtitles, that is, the language in which the subtitles will be made.

Choosing the spoken language and subtitling language

You can also choose where the texts appear on the slides.

Where on the slide does subtitles appear

After that, you can start the presentation with the From Beginning button on the Slideshow tab.

Start talking, and subtitles will appear on the screen.

Presenting live

You can give a presentation in the so-called live presentation. This means that the audience of the presentation can use their mobile device to follow the presentation and choose in which language your speech will be translated to them. This feature is only available in PowerPoint online version, not in the desktop version.

Launch the live mode from the Present Live button on the Slide show tab. Choose who can join the presentation, only members of your organization or anyone.

Unfortunately, the screenshots of this functionality are only in Finnish.

After that, a qr code and a URL will appear on the screen, through which the audience can follow the performance. By scanning the QR code or entering the address, they can follow the presentation and choose the language of the subtitles.