What Does "Meeting Minutes" Mean? A Guide to Writing Meeting Minutes in English

What Does "Meeting Minutes" Mean? It's Not About Minutes on a Clock

"Meeting minutes" in Chinese is "會議記錄" or "議事錄," not "會議分鐘." In spoken English, people often just say "minutes," for example, "Can you take minutes?" means you are asked to write the meeting minutes. The verb can be "take" or "keep," such as "take the minutes" or "keep minutes."

Common Sections in Meeting Minutes (English)

Here are common sections in meeting minutes with their Chinese equivalents:

• Date: 日期
• Scheduled starting time: 預計開始時間
• Actual starting time: 實際開始時間
• Meeting end time: 會議結束時間
• Place: 地點
• Minutes taker / note taker: 會議記錄者 (avoid "recorder" because it means a recording device or a recording engineer)
• Present / attendee: 出席者
• Apologies: 請假者, can use "Absent with apologies" or "regrets," but not "take leave"
• Discussion / topics: 討論主題
• Resolution: 通過嘅決議
• Date of next meeting: 下次會議日期
• Approval of previous meeting minutes: 確認上次會議記錄

Useful Phrases for Reviewing Previous Minutes at the Start of a Meeting

At the beginning of a meeting, the chairperson often says:

To begin, let’s quickly go over the minutes from our last meeting.

This means "Before we start, let's quickly review the minutes from our last meeting."

Use Tinrec to Automatically Organize Meeting Minutes

Writing meeting minutes by hand is slow and easy to miss details. Now you can use AI tools to help. Tinrec (秒听录音) supports real-time recording-to-text, bot-free recording of Zoom/Meet/Teams meetings, and can automatically generate summaries and action items, and even answer questions about the meeting content via AI. No need to type everything yourself, saving you from overtime work.

For more tips on meeting minutes, you can refer to the Cambridge Dictionary definition of minutes: the written record of what was said at a meeting.

References

• 【商用英文會議】會議紀錄的英文怎麼說？相關用語和記錄技巧大解析｜Lado 拿多企業英文培訓
• meeting minutes - 英中 – Linguee词典
• 超實用指南》英文會議記錄怎麼寫｜天下雜誌
• 輕鬆撰寫英文會議記錄 (Meeting Minutes) ，讓英文突飛猛進吧！｜女人迷 Womany
• THE MINUTES中文(繁體)翻譯：劍橋詞典