Chinese Simplied and Traditional Troubleshooting

If you're trying to transcribe Chinese audio with MacWhisper you may run into issues where the transcription will be in the wrong dialect (Simplified vs Traditional). This is unfortunately caused by how the Whisper transcription system works, where it was trained on a mix of Simplified and Traditional Chinese. As a result MacWhisper can't always transcribe these languages correctly.

Custom Prompt

One way to (possibly) improve your results is to use the prompt feature of Whisper. This prompt will give the transcription engine some context on what the transcription is about. But, this can also be used to guide the transcript into the correct Chinese dialect.

To set up a custom prompt open Settings, navigate to Advanced and then scroll down until you see the Prompt section. Fill in something like this: 以下是普通话的句子 to guide the transcript in the right direction. The more context and correct dialect you use the higher the chances of good results.

Note that this approach won't always work so your results may vary.