How to understand Japanese and Korean live streams in English

Japanese and Korean streams have no subtitles while they are live, and clip channels only translate the highlights hours later. Echo Captions listens to the stream as it happens, recognizes the speech and translates it, so you can follow a VTuber or a Korean streamer live. In most languages the English line appears about a second after the words are spoken.

Where it works

• —YouTube Live: VTuber streams, Japanese and Korean creators, premieres while they are live.
• —Twitch: live streams and past broadcasts (VODs).
• —Kick: live streams and past broadcasts.
• —The stream needs no captions: Echo works from the audio.

Set-up

1. 01

   Install Echo Captions

   Add it from the Chrome Web Store. No account is needed for the first try.

2. 02

   Open the stream

   Any Japanese or Korean stream on YouTube Live, Twitch or Kick.

3. 03

   Click the Echo button in the player

   It sits in the player’s control bar. One click starts speech recognition and translation for that stream.

4. 04

   Pick English (or your language)

   Echo uses your browser language; change it in the popup from the toolbar icon. 81 languages are available.

5. 05

   Keep the original line if you like

   The Japanese or Korean line can stay above the translation, useful when you are learning or want to check a name.

What to expect

The translation is tuned for spoken language, so gaming talk, reactions, fillers and nicknames read the way a person would say them. Recognition works from the audio: loud background music, several people talking over each other, or game sound louder than the voice lower the accuracy, the same things that make a stream hard for a human listener. Singing segments are harder than talking. Captions appear about a second after speech in most languages, and a few seconds behind in the rest.

Nothing is recorded. Audio is sent in short chunks to the speech-to-text provider only while Echo is on, and Echo doesn’t keep a list of the streams you watch.

Free minutes and plans

Live translation runs continuously, so it uses the daily allowance faster than a regular video: about a minute and a half of live a day as a guest (about 7 minutes on your first day) and about 3 minutes with a free account, enough to see it work on a real stream. On a plan: Echo Lite ($1.99 a month) about 10 minutes of live a day, Echo Pro ($3.99) about 40 minutes, Echo Unlimited ($15.99) about 130 minutes.

Updated 2026-11-01 · All guides