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Translation feature not available in Teams Premium Business Account

LeonieM 20 Reputation points
2026-06-10T06:50:52.1833333+00:00

Good day,

we encounter the following issue:

Person A with a business Teams Account and Premium license creates a Teams Meeting and the Meeting gets started by Person B as co organizer that has a business Account and Premium License too. During the last 4 weeks, the live translation oftentimes does not work, the function "translate into" cannot be chosen by the participants of the meeting. The participants join with private Teams accounts as well as guest accounts via browser as well as App.

We have tried to turn on and off the automated translation feature in the meeting options, but either way, oftentimes the option to turn on the "translate into" option is still not available.

Different people create the meetings and different people start the meetings and participants differ too from meeting to meeting.

We have worked with Microsoft Teams Business Accounts + Premium Add on for the past year and we have not encountered these issues before. From the user end, we didn´t change the procedure or settings.

My question is, what could be the problem here? Or was there an update of MS Teams Premium that creates issues and there is nothing we can do?

Thank you very much for your help!

Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Teams for business | Meetings and calls | Other
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Answer accepted by question author

Tamara-Hu 16,030 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
2026-06-10T08:40:43.04+00:00

Hello @LeonieM, 

Thank you for the detailed description.  

Based on the information you’ve shared, I’ve reviewed the available internal resources but was not able to find any updates related to this issue. At this time, there is no documented change indicating that this functionality has been intentionally removed.

Since the issue appears intermittently, the best approach is to validate the required conditions for one of the meetings where the feature is missing. 

Please go through the checks below during an affected meeting: 

Step 1: Verify multilingual speech recognition is enabled 

Before the meeting starts: 

  • Open the meeting from the Teams calendar 
  • Select Edit > Meeting options 
  • Locate Recording and transcription 
  • Confirm that Enable multilingual speech recognition is turned on 

 User's image

This setting is required for live translated captions to be available. 

Step 2: Start the meeting and enable captions 

During the meeting: 

  • Click More (…) > Language and speech > Show live captions 
  • Once captions appear, open Caption settings 
  • Check if the “Translate to” option is available 

User's image

If captions are not turned on, the translation option will not appear. 

Step 3: Validate spoken language setting 

  • In Caption settings > Language settings, confirm the Meeting spoken language is set correctly 
  • If the spoken language is incorrect or not set, translation may not be offered 

Step 4: Compare working vs non-working meetings 

If possible, compare: 

  • A meeting where translation works 
  • A meeting where it does not 

Check for differences in: 

  • Organizer 
  • Meeting options (especially Step 2) 
  • How the meeting was created (new vs reused meeting) 

Test with:

  • All participants using the Teams desktop app
  • Signed-in users (not anonymous/guest where possible)

Step 5: Check meeting policies (admin-controlled) 

Ask your IT or Microsoft 365 administrator to review the Teams meeting policies by following these steps: 

  • Sign in to the Teams admin center using a Global Admin or Teams Admin account. 
  • Go to Meetings > Meeting policies. 
  • Identify and open the policy assigned to the affected users. 
  • Scroll to the Recording & transcription section and confirm the following settings are enabled: 
    • Live captions: Enabled 
    • Transcription: Enabled 
    • Copilot: On 

 User's image

You can also refer to this article to learn more about this feature: Multilingual speech recognition in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Support 

If any of these settings are disabled, the translation option may not appear during meetings. 

If all checks pass but issue persists:

Given that the behavior is intermittent and occurs across different meetings, users, and client types, I recommend engaging Microsoft Support for further investigation. This type of issue may require backend analysis that is not visible from standard settings or documentation. 

Microsoft Support has access to backend telemetry, tenant-level diagnostics, and service health insights that are not available through standard documentation or community channels. This deeper level of analysis will help determine whether the issue is related to a service change, a tenant-specific condition, or an emerging platform issue that requires escalation.  

For business support:    

  • Find your Microsoft 365 admin: If you don't know who the global admin is in your organization, you can find guidance here: How can I find my Microsoft 365 admin? - Microsoft Support     
  • Submit a service request: The Global Administrator should create a support request with Microsoft to receive advanced technical assistance. For detailed instructions, see: Get support - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn
  • If your subscription is from a partner or reseller, contact the reseller's support provider to help open a service request on behalf of you instead.     

If you discover any solutions or have additional insights, please consider replying to this thread to help others in the community.    

I sincerely apologize for redirecting you to the Microsoft Technical Support Team. While I strive to assist as much as possible here in the forum, my resources are limited when it comes to backend-level diagnostics and advanced troubleshooting.   

Thank you again for raising this, your observations are very helpful in identifying patterns, especially since the issue is intermittent.

Please feel free to share any additional findings or patterns you notice.

Best Regards,

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment". 

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  1. AI answer

    2026-06-10T06:51:13.6233333+00:00

    Based on the documented behavior, live translated captions and transcription depend on both licensing and specific meeting policy settings. The described symptoms (Translate to option intermittently missing for participants) align with one or more of these conditions not being met consistently for a given meeting.

    Key points from the documentation:

    1. License requirements
      • Live translated captions and transcripts are part of Teams Premium and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
      • If the meeting organizer has a Teams Premium or Microsoft 365 Copilot license, all meeting participants can use translated captions and transcription without needing their own license.
      • If only individual participants (not the organizer) have a Teams Premium or Microsoft 365 Copilot license, only those licensed participants see the Translate to option and can use translated captions and transcription.
      • For live translated transcription in town halls/meetings, the meeting or event organizer must have a Teams Premium license for attendees to use it.
      This means that for each meeting where translation is expected:
      • The actual organizer of that specific meeting (the account shown as Organizer in the Teams meeting details) must have an active Teams Premium or Microsoft 365 Copilot license if all attendees are expected to see Translate to.
      • If a different person with Premium joins as co-organizer but the original organizer does not have Premium/Copilot, only the licensed individuals will see Translate to, not all participants.
    2. Admin policy requirements
      • For live translated captions, the Live captions setting in the relevant Teams meeting policy must be set to Not enabled, but users can enable. If Live captions is set to Off, live translated captions will not be available.
      • For live translated transcription, the Transcription setting in the relevant meeting policy must be set to On. If Transcription is Off, live translated transcription will not be available.
      • For town halls, Transcription for town hall must be On in the Events policy.
      If meeting policies differ between organizers (for example, some have a policy where Live captions or Transcription is Off), meetings created by those organizers will not expose the Translate to option, even if they have Premium.
    3. Per-meeting language settings
      • During a meeting, participants must go to More actions → Language and speech → Show live captions → Open caption settings → Language settings, or via Record and transcribe → Start transcription → Language settings, and then:
        • Set Your spoken language correctly.
        • Set Translate to to the desired language.
      • The Translate to option is available independent of multilingual speech recognition as long as licensing conditions are met.
      If participants are only turning on captions but not seeing Translate to, it usually indicates either the organizer licensing condition is not met or the meeting policy does not allow captions/transcription.
    4. Scope and timing of translated content
      • Live translated captions and transcripts are only available during the meeting and are not accessible after the meeting ends (unless transcript translations are generated later via other features such as pay-as-you-go transcript translations or Clipchamp, which are separate capabilities).

    Given these rules, the most likely causes for the intermittent behavior are:

    • Some meetings are organized by accounts that do not have Teams Premium or Microsoft 365 Copilot, so participants in those meetings do not see Translate to, even if co-organizers have Premium.
    • Different organizers are assigned different Teams meeting policies; in some policies Live captions or Transcription is Off, which disables live translated captions/transcription for those meetings.
    • For town halls, the Events policy may have Transcription for town hall turned Off for some organizers.

    Recommended checks and actions:

    1. Verify organizer licensing per affected meeting
      • For several meetings where Translate to is missing, check who is listed as Organizer in the Teams meeting details.
      • Confirm that each of those organizer accounts has an active Teams Premium or Microsoft 365 Copilot license assigned.
    2. Verify meeting policies for those organizers
      • In the Teams admin center, for each affected organizer:
        • Check the assigned Meeting policy:
          • Ensure Live captions is set to Not enabled, but users can enable.
          • Ensure Transcription is set to On (for meetings where translated transcription is required).
        • For town halls, check the assigned Events policy:
          • Ensure Transcription for town hall is On.
    3. Ensure participants are using the correct in-meeting path
      • In a test meeting where the organizer definitely has Premium/Copilot and the correct policy:
        • Have a participant open More actions → Language and speech → Show live captions → Open caption settings → Language settings.
        • Confirm that the Translate to dropdown is visible and can be set.
    4. If issues persist for a specific user
      • Run the Teams transcripts diagnostic tool in the Microsoft 365 admin center for an affected user and meeting URL to verify that the account meets the requirements to transcribe a Teams meeting and to surface any configuration issues.

    The documentation does not indicate a recent change that would randomly disable translation; all described behavior is conditional on organizer licensing and meeting policies. Systematically checking those per organizer and per policy is the supported way to resolve the issue.

    References:

    AI-generated content may be incorrect. Read our transparency notes for more information.

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