Speaker (English)
Hi, could I get an iced americano and a slice of the lemon cake?
안녕하세요, 아이스 아메리카노 한 잔이랑 레몬 케이크 한 조각 주세요.
Hello 안녕하세요
Live translation
English ↔ Korean
through one pair of earbuds.
Share an earbud. Pick English and Korean. Each of you hears the other in your own language, live.
A sample exchange
Three turns between English and Korean, the way they'd actually go. Each card shows the original line above the translation.
Speaker (Korean)
네, 알겠습니다. 드시고 가세요, 아니면 포장해 드릴까요?
Of course. Would you like that for here or to go?
Speaker (English)
For here, please. Thank you.
여기서 먹을게요. 감사합니다.
What metcha supports for this pair
| English | Korean | |
|---|---|---|
| Apple on-device translation | ✓ | ✓ |
| Deepgram cloud STT | ✓ | ✓ |
| iOS built-in voices | ✓ | ✓ |
| ElevenLabs premium voices (Plus) | 6 voices | 4 voices |
| Voice cloning (Plus, your voice) | ✓ | ✓ |
Why metcha for this pair
K-pop and K-drama have turned Seoul into one of the most visited cities in Asia, and the traffic runs both ways: English teachers settle in Korea while Korean tourists fill London and New York. The hard part is register. Korean draws a firm line between polite 존댓말 and casual 반말, and a literal translator often flattens it. metcha's Better Translation path on metcha Plus keeps the polite form in service settings, so a cafe order or a question to a stranger lands the way you meant it.
Common phrases
Hand-picked phrases for everyday Korean-speaking situations. In metcha you don't need to memorize these — but they're useful to anchor what the app sounds like before you try it.
- Greeting
-
English: Hello, nice to meet you.
Korean: 안녕하세요, 만나서 반갑습니다.
- Thank you
-
English: Thank you so much.
Korean: 정말 감사합니다.
- Apology
-
English: Sorry, I don't understand.
Korean: 죄송해요, 잘 못 알아들었어요.
- Directions
-
English: Where is the nearest subway station?
Korean: 가장 가까운 지하철역이 어디예요?
- Ordering
-
English: What do you recommend?
Korean: 뭐가 맛있어요?
- Allergy
-
English: I'm allergic to peanuts.
Korean: 저는 땅콩 알레르기가 있어요.
- Bill
-
English: The bill, please.
Korean: 계산해 주세요.
- Hotel
-
English: I have a reservation.
Korean: 예약했는데요.
- Pharmacy
-
English: Do you have something for a headache?
Korean: 두통약 있어요?
- Taxi
-
English: Could you take me to this address?
Korean: 이 주소로 가 주세요.
Where you'd use it
- Travel in Seoul, from Hongdae cafes to Gyeongbokgung
- English teachers settling into daily life in Korea
- Korean tourists in the US and UK, asking directions and ordering
- Korean-American families talking across the generations at the same table
Common questions
- Does metcha translate Korean to English as well as English to Korean?
- Yes, both directions run in the same session. When someone speaks English, the other person hears it in Korean; when they reply in Korean, you hear it in English. There is no direction to configure and no turn-taking button. See how it works for the full walkthrough.
- Is English ↔ Korean translation in metcha on-device or cloud?
- Both. metcha's free tier uses Apple's on-device Translation framework where supported (available for both English and Korean). metcha Plus optionally routes through a Better Translation cloud path for more natural phrasing, with a quiet fallback to the on-device path when the network is slow.
- Do I need both AirPods to use metcha for English and Korean?
- No. The simplest mode is one earbud each — you keep one, the other person keeps the other. metcha handles both directions through that single shared pair. If you'd rather both wear your own earbuds, you can pair a second phone in seconds via a QR code (still no app install for the other person).
- What about regional accents within Korean?
- metcha's Deepgram STT path handles major regional variants of Korean robustly. The on-device path is more sensitive to accent — if you find the free path missing words, switching to the metcha Plus cloud STT usually fixes it without changing anything else about the conversation.
- Does it work without internet?
- The free on-device path works fully offline once the relevant Apple Translation language packs are downloaded. metcha Plus features that depend on Deepgram, Better Translation, or ElevenLabs voices need a network connection.
- How many voices does metcha ship for Korean?
- 4 curated native-Korean voices on metcha Plus, plus all iOS built-in voices on the free tier (and any Enhanced or Premium voices you've installed in Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content).
- Are conversations private?
- metcha does not store conversations on our servers, and none of our providers retain audio for training. The free on-device path never sends audio off your phone at all. See the privacy policy for the full data-handling story.