AI dictation for translators: convenience vs. confidentiality

I recently listened to an excellent presentation by Joachim Lépine, during which he mentioned several tools that may be useful for translators. One of them was Blip, an AI-powered dictation tool. I tried it, and it is very good. It handled my Italian-accented English without any difficulty at all, which is not always a given with this kind of software. Most of the time, my Apple TV comes up with rather strange titles when I try to dictate the name of a film or TV show.

But good output is not all that matters.

For translators, and especially for legal translators, the question is not only whether a dictation tool works well, but what happens to the content when you use it. If you dictate the translation of a contract, a certificate, or an HR policy, you are not just saving time and keystrokes. You are processing information that may be confidential, privileged, or otherwise sensitive. Once one looks at it from that angle, the difference between cloud-based and local tools stops being a technical detail and becomes the main issue.

This is why I ended up looking more closely at three dictation tools: Blip, Amical, and Lily Speech.

Blip

Blip is polished. That is the first thing one notices.

It is designed to let you press a hotkey, speak, and get usable text with formatting and cleanup already taken care of. It supports 99+ languages, and the whole point seems to be that you can dictate into practically any app without much friction.

That part works. In my brief test, Blip handled accented English very well. No nonsense, no repeated corrections, no need to slow down and pronounce everything in a staccato way, as with older dictation tools, or slowly as if one were speaking to a rather dim trainee.

That is the good news.

The less good news, at least for some kinds of work, is that Blip is cloud-based: the speech is processed outside your machine. For many tasks, that may be perfectly acceptable. If you are drafting an email, writing notes, or dictating blog ideas, there is probably little to worry about. It is a different matter if you are translating legal documents.

A cloud service may still be secure. But the material still leaves your local environment. For some translators, that will be enough to rule it out, at least for certain assignments.

Pros

• Very easy to use.
• Good formatting and cleanup features.
• Broad language support.
• In my experience, very good with accented English.

Cons

• Cloud-based processing.
• Not ideal for confidential or regulated material.
• One more external layer in the handling of client data.

Links

• Blip AI website
• Blip AI on AppSumo, where the current base lifetime deal for the lowest paid tier is listed at $59.

Amical

Amical is interesting for a more practical reason: it offers cloud processing, just like Blip, but it can run AI models locally as well. That makes it, at least in my view, a more serious option for translators dealing with confidential material.

This is the sort of distinction that product pages often mention as one feature among many, somewhere between “supports many languages” and “has useful shortcuts”. For our kind of work, however, it is not one feature among many. It is the feature. If I am dictating a draft translation of a contract, internal company policy, or some other document that really should not go wandering about beyond my machine, the local option becomes essential.

I tried Amical as well, and the general recognition quality was just as good as Blip’s. The difference is that with Amical, you can keep the processing on your own machine. That matters a great deal.

Pros

• Offers cloud processing and local models.
• Local dictation is available on the free plan, while cloud features are paid.
• Better suited to confidential work.
• Good recognition quality.
• Presented as supporting local privacy and control.

Cons

• Local use may require a bit more setup.
• Performance depends more on your own hardware.
• Slightly less “just press and go” than a cloud-only approach.

Links

• Amical
• Amical on AppSumo, where the current base lifetime deal is listed at $49.

Lily Speech

Lily Speech is a simpler, older-fashioned sort of tool.

It is a Windows speech-to-text application with support for 51 languages. There is a free version, and that alone will make it worth a look for some users.

It belongs to an older generation of tools and is simpler than Blip or Amical. Sometimes that is perfectly fine. Not every tool has to be clever, ambitious, and determined to “revolutionise” one’s workflow before breakfast.

That said, for professional translators with heavier workflows, it will probably feel more limited. It is Windows-only, and its output does not seem to be on the same level as the newer tools. That is not a scientific comparison, merely the fairly obvious impression one gets from using them.

Pros

• Simple.
• Free version available.
• Probably sufficient for basic dictation on Windows.

Cons

• Windows-only.
• More limited than newer tools.
• Might have more problems with accented speech.
• Less obviously suited to demanding professional workflows.

Links

• Lily Speech download

A few use cases

Suppose you are translating a share purchase agreement and dictating portions of your draft. Company names, payment terms, dates, clauses on warranties, indemnities, dispute resolution: all the material that should stay confidential. In that situation, a cloud-based dictation tool is not merely a nice productivity aid. It becomes part of the chain through which confidential information is processed.

Or take HR documentation. Internal disciplinary letters. Medical leave documents. Performance reviews. Perhaps civil-status documents as well: birth certificates, divorce decrees, adoption judgments. Here again, the issue is not whether the dictation tool is good, but whether this is content that should be sent off-machine at all.

This is why the difference between Blip and Amical matters more than one might think at first glance. Blip is convenient and well designed. Amical is more interesting where confidentiality is a genuine concern, because it gives you the possibility of local processing.

Final remark

If you often work with confidential legal or HR material, I would be much more inclined to look at Amical, simply because it gives you a local option.

Lily Speech is worth mentioning, especially for Windows users who want something free and simpler. But for most professional translators, the real comparison is between the other two.

Convenience is useful. Keeping client data on your own machine is the more important distinction.