Translate KakaoTalk voice messages and calls

How to set it up

1. 1
   For voice messages: “Live Listen” with “Screen sound”

   Start Tingdong, then press play on the voice message in KakaoTalk on your Mac. Captions appear as it plays, Korean line on top, your language below.

2. 2
   For calls: call from the KakaoTalk Mac app

   Choose “Call Translation” in Tingdong, then select “Tingdong Microphone” (Website version) as the microphone inside KakaoTalk. That is the entire setup.

3. 3
   Talk, or read along

   They hear your voice plus a translated voice (Website version); you read bilingual captions of everything they say. “Live Listen” alone captions the call without touching your mic.

Korean politeness levels are where short translations go wrong

Korean marks the relationship in the verb ending, drops the subject when it is obvious, and shifts register between a colleague, a client and a friend — so a tool that translates one short message at a time, with no memory of who is speaking to whom, flattens all of that into the same blunt sentence. Tingdong translates a continuous stream of speech and keeps context across sentences, which matters most in exactly the places KakaoTalk is used for work: a long voice message from a supplier, a call with a landlord or a school, a family group where three people answer at once. The original Korean line stays on screen above the translation, so a name, a number or an address can always be checked against what was said.

Frequently asked questions