How to watch Korean and Japanese YouTube videos with English subtitles
A lot of Korean and Japanese YouTube content (drama clips, variety shows, idol content, interviews, vlogs) never gets English subtitles, or only YouTube’s literal auto-translate. Echo Captions translates the video’s caption track with a model tuned for spoken language, and starts on its own when you open the video.
Before you start: the one requirement
On regular YouTube videos Echo translates the caption track, so the video needs one. Most Korean and Japanese videos have at least YouTube’s auto-generated captions, and those work. If the CC button is greyed out and there is no caption track at all, there is nothing to translate. Live streams are different: there Echo works from the audio.
Steps
- 01
Install Echo Captions
From the Chrome Web Store, free to start.
- 02
Open the video
Translation starts automatically on YouTube videos in a language other than yours.
- 03
Check the language
English is picked when your browser is in English; any of 81 languages can be chosen in the popup.
- 04
Use the transcript if you want
Open the transcript inside the player to read ahead, search for a line or jump to a moment.
Why it reads better than auto-translate
- —Spoken Korean and Japanese drop subjects and change politeness levels; Echo’s model translates whole phrases with context instead of word by word.
- —Names, nicknames and fillers come out naturally rather than as literal word salad.
- —Only the parts you actually watch are translated, so skipping around is fine.
- —You can keep the original line above the English one.
Free minutes and plans
As a guest you get about 4 minutes of video a day (about 20 minutes on your first day), about 8 minutes a day with a free account. Echo Lite ($1.99 a month) covers about 1 hour of video a day, Echo Pro ($3.99) about 4 hours a day, and Echo Unlimited ($15.99) all-day watching under a fair-use limit.
Updated 2026-11-01 · All guides