Comparison
TanLens vs Immersive Translate: speech or pages?
Compare TanLens and Immersive Translate: live speech captions and transcripts versus web page and video subtitle translation, as of 2026-11.
TanLens translates live speech and produces a transcript you can edit and export. Immersive Translate translates web pages and video subtitles and is not a real-time speech tool, as of 2026-11. They solve adjacent problems, so many people use both: one for what they hear, the other for what they read on a page.
01Different inputs, different outputs
Immersive Translate works on text that already exists: a web page, a PDF or a video’s subtitle track. TanLens works on audio that is happening now: a meeting, a livestream or a room. That difference shapes the output. TanLens produces a timed transcript and subtitle files because it has to follow speech in real time; a page translator produces translated text where the source text already sits. Neither output substitutes for the other, even when both are bilingual.
02What TanLens is designed for
TanLens is for meetings, streams, lectures and uploaded recordings where you need bilingual captions and a durable transcript. It supports 20 languages with auto-detection, a glossary for names and product terms, and exports in SRT, VTT, ASS or TXT. Broadcast rooms let a host share captions with an audience. Because it captures a browser tab or a microphone, it does not translate the article you are reading, the PDF on your desktop or subtitles that are already baked into a video.
03Where Immersive Translate is the better fit
If your work is mostly reading foreign-language pages, papers or documentation, a page translator is the direct tool. If you want to translate an existing subtitle file or a video’s subtitle track without re-listening to the audio, that is also its territory rather than TanLens’s. As of 2026-11, check the current browser support and features on Immersive Translate’s own site if page translation is the priority.
Frequently asked questions
Related pages
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