Real-time translated phone calls
You speak Italian. Their phone rings in Shenzhen and they hear Mandarin. They answer in Mandarin and you hear Italian. It is an ordinary telephone call on their side — no account, no app, no browser, no internet.
How it works
- Open the dialer in your VoxTranslate dashboard and type a phone number.
- Pick your language and theirs, and the translation tier you want.
- You see the price per minute and your credit balance before you dial. Nothing starts on a number you have not been shown.
- Their phone rings. You talk. Each of you hears the other translated, live, in both directions at once — not turn by turn.
- When the call ends, the transcript, the cost and — if you enabled it — the recording and an AI summary land against the project you chose.
What it can do today
- Call any supported number. You call an ordinary telephone number and speak your language. The person you call hears theirs, on a normal phone call.
- Nothing to install at the other end. No account, no app, no browser and no internet connection. Their phone simply rings.
- Mobiles and landlines. Mobile and landline numbers are both supported, in every country your organisation allows.
- Your own caller ID. Your organisation can present a number it owns and has verified with the carrier. We do not allow arbitrary caller ID, because in most of our markets that is illegal.
- Transcripts. Optional. Transcripts land in the same place as your meeting transcripts, and can be attached to a project.
- Optional recording. Optional, off by default, and controlled per organisation. When it is on, the person you call is told before anything is recorded.
- AI summaries. Optional summaries and sentiment over the call transcript, using the same AI features as your meetings.
- EU infrastructure. Calls are carried and anchored in Frankfurt, and transcripts, recordings and call records are stored in the EU.
What it cannot do yet
We would rather you find this here than after signing something. Each of these is a limitation with a reason, not a gap we are hoping you will not notice.
- Receiving calls. Not yet. Outbound calling is available first; receiving calls on a number your organisation owns is next.
- Two telephones bridged together. Not yet. Today one side is VoxTranslate and the other is a telephone.
- Video to a telephone. Not to a telephone — telephones carry voice. An upgrade that sends the person you called a one-time link into a browser video room is in development.
- Mainland China. Not yet. A telephone call to China is a carrier call rather than an internet connection, so the technical picture is promising — but we will not claim it until we have placed real calls to real handsets in mainland China and published what we measured.
- EU-only processing. Telephony, call media, recordings and stored data are handled in the EU. The AI translation itself currently runs with providers outside the EU, so we do not claim EU-only processing. We publish exactly which step goes where.
The person you call is told
If a call is being recorded or transcribed, the other person hears a short spoken announcement saying so — in the language they are hearing — before anything is kept. Your organisation chooses whether they are simply told, or asked to press a key to agree, and what happens if they decline.
This is not a setting you can switch off while recording is on. A recording nobody was told about is not a feature.
Where it fits
International sales
Call a prospect in their language on the first attempt, instead of waiting for an interpreter to be free.
Suppliers and manufacturing
Talk to a factory line manager directly. The people who actually know the answer are rarely the ones who speak English.
Customer support
Handle a call in a language nobody on shift speaks, without transferring the customer twice.
Cross-border teams
Reach a colleague or contractor on an ordinary phone, wherever they are and whatever they speak.
Logistics and travel
Call a hotel, a port agent or a driver who will never install an app for one conversation.
Recruitment
Screen candidates in their own language, and keep the transcript against the role.
What it costs
Calls draw on the same credit balance as the rest of your organisation's VoxTranslate usage — there is no separate wallet and no separate invoice. A minute of a translated call is made of three things, and you see the total before you dial.
- Real-time translation. A call runs two streams, one in each direction, for its whole duration — closing the idle side would lose the first words of every reply. Rates are per minute per direction, so on Standard that is $0.0045 each way, $0.0090 per minute of call.
- The telephone network. This is the part that varies, and it varies by where you are calling: a landline in Milan and a mobile in Shenzhen are not the same number. We do not publish a single figure for it, because there isn't one. The dashboard quotes the exact rate for the destination you typed, before the call starts.
- Optional services. Recording, transcription and AI summaries are off until an administrator turns them on, and they are priced only when used.
Credits are held when the call starts and settled against the real duration when it ends. Anything unused comes back. Your administrators can cap the maximum destination rate, the maximum call length, how many calls can run at once, and which countries are reachable at all.
Questions
- Does the person I call need VoxTranslate?
- No account, no app, no browser and no internet connection. Their phone simply rings.
- Can I call mobile phones and landlines?
- Mobile and landline numbers are both supported, in every country your organisation allows.
- Can I call China?
- Not yet. A telephone call to China is a carrier call rather than an internet connection, so the technical picture is promising — but we will not claim it until we have placed real calls to real handsets in mainland China and published what we measured.
- Can I receive calls?
- Not yet. Outbound calling is available first; receiving calls on a number your organisation owns is next.
- Can calls be recorded?
- Optional, off by default, and controlled per organisation. When it is on, the person you call is told before anything is recorded.
- Does VoxTranslate tell the other person what is happening?
- Yes, and this is not optional when anything is being kept. Before a call is recorded or transcribed, we play a short spoken announcement in the language that person is hearing, saying what is being done. Depending on your organisation’s policy they may also be asked to press a key to agree; if they decline, the call can continue without recording, or end — you choose which.
- Can I use my own number as the caller ID?
- Your organisation can present a number it owns and has verified with the carrier. We do not allow arbitrary caller ID, because in most of our markets that is illegal.
- Can I make video calls to a telephone?
- Not to a telephone — telephones carry voice. An upgrade that sends the person you called a one-time link into a browser video room is in development.
- How much does it cost?
- Calls are billed from your organisation’s existing credit balance — there is no second currency. The price per minute depends on the destination and the translation tier, and it is shown before you dial, together with your balance. Credits are held when the call starts and settled against the real duration when it ends; anything unused comes straight back.
- Is this GDPR compliant?
- Calls are carried and anchored in Frankfurt, and transcripts, recordings and call records are stored in the EU. Telephony, call media, recordings and stored data are handled in the EU. The AI translation itself currently runs with providers outside the EU, so we do not claim EU-only processing. We publish exactly which step goes where. We would rather tell you exactly where each step runs than give you a one-word answer that does not survive an audit.
- What happens to recordings?
- They are stored in the EU, kept for the retention period your organisation sets, and can be deleted at any time. Deleting one removes it from storage and from the search index, not just from the list.
- Which translation tiers can I use?
- The same tiers as your meetings. The tier decides which languages are available, which models do the speech and the translation, the latency you can expect and the price per minute.
Available on the Business and Enterprise plans.