Norwegian speech to text · Free hours for students
Transcribe Norwegian audio to text, free for students.
Upload a Norwegian recording and get a draft with speaker labels and a timestamp on every speaker turn. Correct it while you listen and export it to Word. Students at universities in Norway and 12 other European countries get 7 hours of audio free every month.
7 free hours of audio a month · No card needed
Students at universities and colleges in Norway, such as the University of Oslo, the University of Bergen, NTNU and UiT The Arctic University of Norway, get free hours once they confirm their university email, and so do students in 12 other European countries.
Try an example
Interview about student life, in Norwegian
Norwegian · Two speakers · Fictional excerpt
Intervjuer 00:12
Hva hjelper deg når en oppgave begynner å føles uoverkommelig?
Student 00:18
Det gjør en stor forskjell at vi kan snakke om oppgaven i kollokviegruppa. Da er jeg ikke alene om å finne en vei videre.
Intervjuer 00:31
Kan du fortelle om en konkret gang da det hjalp?
How to do it
How to transcribe a Norwegian interview
1. Sign up with your university email
Use your university address, for example one ending in uio.no, uib.no, ntnu.no or uit.no, and confirm it with the code we send you. If your student email isn’t recognised, write to us.
2. Upload the recording and choose Norwegian
Upload the interview as mp3, m4a, wav or mp4; long recordings are fine. Pick Norwegian, or let Spirelight detect the language. Choosing it yourself is the safer option for short clips and for recordings that open in English or mix in a lot of English. Processing time depends on the length of the recording.
3. Listen, correct and export to Word
Listen in the built-in player and fix dialect words, names, place names and specialist terms. Rename the speakers across the whole document, for example to pseudonyms, add pauses or dialect forms if your method needs them, and export to Word (.docx), plain text or SRT.
Dialects
Why Norwegian is hard for speech recognition
Norway has no spoken standard. Most people speak their own dialect everywhere, including in your interview, while writing follows one of two official standards, Bokmål or Nynorsk. Speech recognition has to turn all that variation into written words, so dialect is where most of your corrections will be.
Take “I don’t know”. In Bokmål it is “jeg vet ikke”, but a participant from Western Norway may say “eg veit ikkje” and one from Trøndelag “æ veit itj”. Don’t assume the draft spells words like these the way they were said. Written Bokmål is closest to urban speech in south-eastern Norway, so expect more corrections the further a dialect is from it, for example in Northern Norway, Trøndelag or rural Western Norway.
Many students also mix English into their Norwegian (“deadline”, “kind of”). Set the language to Norwegian and check the English words as you proofread.
- Note names, place names and local words during or right after the interview, so you can correct them quickly.
- Interviewing in a dialect you don’t know well? Ask someone who speaks it to check the passages you quote.
Conventions
Dialect-near or normalised: choose before you proofread
There is no single Norwegian convention. Students who study language itself, as in sociolinguistics, usually transcribe close to the dialect, because the speech is their data. Many students whose analysis is about content, for example a thematic analysis, normalise to Bokmål or Nynorsk instead, sometimes keeping a dialect form where it matters.
Normalising can also protect participants. In a small community, a distinctive dialect word in a quote can point to the person who said it.
Whatever you choose, describe it in your methods chapter (the written standard, whether you kept dialect forms, pauses or hesitations, and how you marked them) and apply the same rules to every participant. A 2025 study of 20 sociolinguistic master’s theses at Norwegian universities argues that transcription choices can shape how participants come across.
Spirelight gives you a draft with speaker labels and timestamps. If your method needs dialect forms, pauses or overlaps, you add them while you proofread, and anonymising is always your job. See how to transcribe an interview.
Writing in English
Norwegian interviews, English thesis
Many master’s theses (masteroppgaver) at Norwegian universities are written in English, even when the interviews were in Norwegian. Spirelight transcribes; it does not translate. That suits your analysis: you code and interpret what participants actually said.
A common way to work is to analyse the Norwegian transcript and translate only the quotes you use in the thesis.
- Say in your methods chapter that the translations are your own.
- Translate for meaning, not word for word: a “kollokviegruppe” is a study group, and a dialect word may need a short gloss.
- Keep the Norwegian original of every quote, so you can check it and show it if asked.
- Ask a native speaker to check your key quotes, and follow your supervisor on whether the originals go in the thesis.
Data and ethics
Sikt and your university’s rules
In Norway, a student project that processes personal data is usually notified to Sikt (formerly NSD) through its notification form, the meldeskjema, before data collection starts. Sikt counts a voice on a recording as personal data, so a recorded interview normally needs a form even if everyone is anonymised in the thesis. For bachelor’s and master’s projects, Sikt expects your supervisor to be named as responsible, and its form page asks for submission at least 30 days before data collection. Your institution’s routines decide the details.
Some departments also say which tools you may use. One department at the University of Oslo, for example, classifies all audio recordings as “red” data and recommends a university tool for recording them. Check your department’s rules before you upload.
Spirelight’s built-in consent templates are in English and Danish only, so for Norwegian-speaking participants use your project’s own information letter and consent form. Our participant information sheet guide covers what goes in one.
Questions about transcribing Norwegian audio
Can I transcribe Norwegian audio to text for free?
Yes, if you study at a university or college in Norway, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Poland, Finland, France or Spain. Confirm your university email with the code we send to it and you get 7 hours of audio free every month, with no card and no trial. Free hours reset each month and don’t roll over. Everyone else pays €2 per hour of audio, or €14 a month for Spirelight Plus with 10 hours included. Student email not recognised? Write to us.
How accurate is Norwegian speech to text?
It depends mostly on the recording. Background noise, people talking over each other, strong dialects and specialist terms cause more errors, and in Norway most people speak their own dialect, in interviews too. Treat the transcript as a first draft: listen through it in the built-in player, fix names and terms, and check every quote you use.
Will the transcript be in Bokmål or Nynorsk?
There is one Norwegian setting, not separate ones for Bokmål and Nynorsk. Check word forms against the standard your department expects as you proofread, and add dialect features by hand if your method needs them. Say in your methods chapter which standard you used and why.
Can Spirelight translate Norwegian audio to English?
No. Spirelight transcribes Norwegian audio as Norwegian text; it doesn’t translate. For a thesis in English, analyse the Norwegian transcript, translate the quotes you use yourself, say that the translations are yours and ask a native speaker to check the important ones.
Can I get a verbatim transcript of a Norwegian interview?
You get a draft to build one from. The “Word for word” setting only changes English recordings: for Norwegian, both styles give the same draft, and neither touches repeats or false starts. If your method needs hesitations, pauses, overlaps or dialect forms, add them while you listen. The guide to verbatim transcription shows the usual notation.
Where does my audio go, and can I upload interviews with personal data?
Transcription runs on AssemblyAI’s servers in the EU. Your files, transcripts and account are stored with Google Firebase in the US, and AI summaries and chat are processed by OpenAI in the US. We don’t offer a data processing agreement (DPA). Whether you may upload interviews with personal data depends on your university’s rules, so ask your supervisor or your university’s data protection officer (personvernombud) first. The terms and privacy policy have the details.
Other languages
Transcribing another language?
Each of these pages covers what to expect from that language’s recordings. Interview transcription covers file formats, proofreading and English recordings.
Get started
Stop typing out interviews by hand
Your next step is simple: sign up with your university email and upload your recording. You get a draft you can correct and download in Word.
7 free hours a month with an eligible university email · No card · No trial