92.9 · THE PROGRAMME GUIDE
Radio you can read.
Half the good radio in the world is in a language you do not speak. So I taught mine to write. Turn on Live Captions while a station plays and the speech appears on screen as it is spoken, transcribed in more than 30 languages and translated into about twenty, all on your device. Nothing you listen to goes anywhere. It is a Premium feature with a free preview. Here is how it works.
Subtitles came for everything except radio
Films got them. Streams got them. Even the clips your nephew sends you got them. Radio never did, because radio is live and it never stops to let anyone catch up. I did not think that was a good enough reason. So while a station plays, Radio Dad listens along and writes the speech out line by line, in real time, the way a live TV caption works. If the broadcast is in a language you do not read, it can translate each line the moment it lands: the original on top, your language underneath.
The difference is between hearing a broadcast and following one. A Turkish news bulletin. A French talk show. An Arabic morning programme. You read along while you listen, at your own pace, and if a word gets past you, you glance back at the last line instead of losing the thread.
HOW IT READS
« Il est trois heures du matin, et quelque part quelqu'un allume sa radio. »
“It is three in the morning, and somewhere someone is switching on their radio.”
How it works
Everything runs on your device. The captions come from Apple's on-device speech models and the translation from Apple's on-device translation, so the audio never leaves your phone: nothing is uploaded, nothing is recorded, nothing is relayed through me. I made that call for privacy first. But it is also why the captions feel immediate. There is no server to wait for at three in the morning, or at any other hour.
Using it is short work. Start any station. Tap the captions control. Pick the original, the translation, or both. There is a free preview so you can try it on a real broadcast before you pay anything; after that, Live Captions and translation are part of Premium, at $9.99 a month or $39.99 a year with a 7-day free trial on the yearly plan.
What people use it for
Following foreign news at the source. Hear how a story is told where it is happening, in the original broadcast, and still understand every line. No summary, no middleman, just the bulletin as it went out.
Learning a language by ear. Real radio is fast, messy and native, exactly the input a textbook cannot give you. Reading the captions alongside the audio bridges the gap: you catch the words you know and see the ones you do not. Point it at a station from Türkiye, France, Germany or Japan and listen with the net up.
Accessibility. If speech is hard to catch, a written line to read along with makes talk radio far easier to follow. The words wait for you. The broadcast does not have to.
Which languages, and the honest limits
Captions can transcribe speech in more than 30 languages, including Turkish, Arabic, Russian, Greek, Hungarian and Hindi. Translation covers a smaller set of about twenty, including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian. A language outside the translation set, Greek say, or Hungarian, can still be captioned in its own language; it just cannot be auto-translated yet. The lists come from Apple's on-device models, so they grow as Apple adds languages with each iOS update. The full current lists live on my support page.
Questions from the mailbag
Can Radio Dad caption live radio, not just podcasts?
Yes. That is the whole trick. Captions run on live broadcasts in real time: turn them on while a station is on air and the words land on screen as they are spoken, with an optional translated line beneath. Talk, news and speech radio all work. Music without words simply gives the captions nothing to write.
Does the translation run on my device?
Yes. Captions and translation both run entirely on your device. Nothing you listen to is uploaded, recorded or sent to a server, so a private broadcast stays private. It is also why the words feel immediate: there is no round trip to a cloud to wait for.
Which languages do captions and translation support?
Captions can transcribe speech in more than 30 languages, including Turkish, Arabic, Russian, Greek, Hungarian and Hindi. Translation covers a smaller set of about twenty, including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian. A language outside the translation set can still be captioned, it just cannot be auto-translated yet. The lists come from Apple's on-device models and grow with each iOS update.
Is live captioning free?
Live Captions and translation are a Premium feature, with a free preview so you can try them on a real broadcast first. Premium is $9.99 a month or $39.99 a year, and it starts with a 7-day free trial on the yearly plan.
More from the programme guide: the best radio app for iPhone and a free TuneIn alternative. The rest of the schedule is at the guides desk.
TRY IT ON A REAL STATION
Read the world.
Get Radio Dad for iPhone and iPad and turn captions on over any live broadcast. The preview is free, and I will be here either way. Captions need iOS 26 or later; the rest of the app runs from iOS 18.