The model does not need to be that smart to understand that a name it does not know that starts with a capital letter is a the name of a place or a person. It does not need to be aware of whom this refers to, it just needs to transcribe it.

Also, there are generalist models that have enough of a grasp of a dozen or so languages that fit comfortably in 7B parameters. Like the older Mistral, which had the best multi-lingual support at the time, but newer models around that size are probably good candidates. I am not surprised that a multilingual specialised model can fit in 8B or so.