A letter from the Belastingdienst has landed on the doormat, and it might as well be written in code. At work, the team meeting that began in English has drifted into Dutch, and you’re nodding along while hoping nobody asks for your opinion. Sound familiar? We spoke with OmniForge, a tech company helping expats tackle the language barrier online.
Why the usual AI tools fall short
AI assistants promise to help with both of these challenges, but they have their limits. Firstly, many recording and transcription tools only support a handful of major languages, which leaves plenty of expats working in English by default, says Daniel G. Ríos, co-founder and CEO of OmniForge. Secondly, most of them process everything in the cloud, which is less than ideal when it comes to an employment contract, payslip or document with your BSN on it.
The risk is not theoretical. When hackers posted Odido’s customer data online, millions of people were reminded how far personal data can travel. “In the best case scenario, your data might be used to profile you for ads,” Daniel says, “but in the case of data exfiltration from cloud providers, your data might also be used for nefarious purposes.”
A local alternative, built by expats
OmniForge is a privacy-first AI desktop app for macOS and Windows that transcribes meetings and answers questions about your documents, all on your own computer. It was built by a team of expats in the Netherlands who, as Daniel puts it, “experience the exact same bilingual friction our users do.”
https://omniforge.online/dutchnews
“People should not have to compromise on their personal information in order to benefit from a service,” he says. In practice, the AI engine lives on your machine rather than in a data centre. “You could disconnect your WiFi entirely, and it will still securely transcribe your meetings and analyse your documents.” Only account login and subscription management are online.
There’s an environmental upside too, Daniel argues: running AI on your own computer’s spare processing power, what he calls “Green AI at the Edge,” can avoid the electricity and cooling water that big cloud models require from data centres.
When the meeting switches language
Language is where OmniForge stands out. It transcribes audio in 25 languages, including Dutch, English, German, French, Spanish and Polish, and can write summaries and answers in around 200 languages. In other words, a meeting held in Dutch can be summarised in whichever language you read most comfortably.
Then there’s the meeting that starts in English and slides into Dutch. Other tools make you pick a language in advance, Daniel says, whereas OmniForge listens for mid-sentence switches. He admits the transcript does not always get the spoken language right, but because the summary can be generated in any supported language regardless of the input, the gist still comes through.
A typical user, he says, is an international professional in a technical project meeting where half the team defaults to Dutch. Instead of stopping the flow to ask for translations, they record locally, having the assurance that a full English summary will be waiting the moment the meeting ends.
Decoding the paperwork
The same tool works on documents, not just audio. You can drop a Dutch PDF into OmniForge, whether it’s a letter from your landlord or your VvE, a payslip or a notice from the Belastingdienst, then ask questions and get an explanation in English.
Phone calls are covered, too. If you’re talking to the gemeente, put the phone on speaker and record the conversation: even if you feel lost during the call, OmniForge transcribes it so you have a comprehensive summary to review the moment you hang up. “It takes the stress out of local administration,” is how Daniel puts it.
Built for international teams
For employers, the same features make onboarding and internal meetings more inclusive: colleagues who are not fully fluent can follow along through a summary in their preferred language. And because OmniForge records locally, there’s no bot joining your video calls. A project manager juggling several projects can also keep a workspace for each, store meetings and documents together, and ask the assistant for recaps or highlights.
Moreover, local processing represents a win for compliance: HR handles sensitive employee data, and client confidentiality is non-negotiable. Companies are increasingly wary of staff feeding sensitive information to AI chatbots, Daniel explains. “Keeping everything in-house means GDPR compliance by default.” Many cloud tools go to great lengths to get certified, he notes, “but that just means they took steps to secure their customers’ data. With OmniForge, each customer is the sole owner of their data.”
Limitations and next steps
Daniel is upfront about OmniForge’s limits. Because everything runs on your device, transcription speed depends on your hardware: a brand-new machine will get through an hour-long meeting much faster than an older laptop. The assistant is above-average at summaries, highlights and finding information in your documents, “but it cannot compete with the likes of ChatGPT or Claude in terms of raw intelligence,” Daniel concedes, since it has a fraction of the resources.
OmniForge’s next steps will focus on speeding up the models on older hardware and adding more regional dialects. A mobile version is also planned, depending on how many people adopt the app.
Try it on your next confusing letter
The best first step, Daniel says, is to try OmniForge on your next meeting or baffling Dutch letter. Paid tiers start at €9.99 per month for unlimited quotas for individual users. But there’s a generous free tier so you can try before you buy: 40 complimentary minutes per recording and 50 indexed files. All you need to do is download OmniForge for Mac or Windows for free and register.