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Smart, cultural translation

Translation that knows
what you actually mean.

Cultran is a smarter translator. It listens to your voice, understands what you actually mean and says it back the way a local would, whether you're on a short trip or working from a new city for months.

Download the App See some examples→
14 languages · Reads the room · Voice, camera, or text
Listening · EN
Take a photo or just type!
9:41
🇺🇸 EN JAKO 🇯🇵🇰🇷
EN · YOU

Could you help me? I got on the wrong train and need to get to Shinjuku.

I really wanna go to Busan, should I go on the weekend or during the week?

JA · TRANSLATEDKO · TRANSLATED Polite

すみません。電車を間違えたみたいで、新宿に行きたいんです。

부산에 꼭 가보고 싶은데, 주말에 가는 게 나을까요, 평일이 나을까요?

sumimasen · densha o machigaeta mitai de...busan-e kkok gabogo sipeunde · jumare ganeun ge naeulkkayo...
Heads up

“Sumimasen” softens the ask before requesting help from a stranger.

“-neunde” gently sets up the context before asking for a recommendation.

New York Nice to meet you
Mexico City Mucho gusto
Tokyo はじめまして
Seoul 처음 뵙겠습니다
Bangkok สวัสดีครับ
Beijing 很高兴认识你
Hanoi Xin chào
Jakarta Salam kenal
Kuala Lumpur Selamat berkenalan
Paris Enchanté
Berlin Freut mich
Rome Piacere
Lisbon Prazer
London Pleased to meet you
Madrid Un placer
Osaka よろしく
Busan 반갑습니다
Chiang Mai ยินดีที่ได้รู้จัก
Shanghai 幸会
Ho Chi Minh City Rất hân hạnh
Surabaya Senang berkenalan
Penang Salam perkenalan
Montreal Ravi de te rencontrer
Vienna Sehr erfreut
Milan Molto lieto
São Paulo Muito prazer
New York Nice to meet you
Mexico City Mucho gusto
Tokyo はじめまして
Seoul 처음 뵙겠습니다
Bangkok สวัสดีครับ
Beijing 很高兴认识你
Hanoi Xin chào
Jakarta Salam kenal
Kuala Lumpur Selamat berkenalan
Paris Enchanté
Berlin Freut mich
Rome Piacere
Lisbon Prazer
London Pleased to meet you
Madrid Un placer
Osaka よろしく
Busan 반갑습니다
Chiang Mai ยินดีที่ได้รู้จัก
Shanghai 幸会
Ho Chi Minh City Rất hân hạnh
Surabaya Senang berkenalan
Penang Salam perkenalan
Montreal Ravi de te rencontrer
Vienna Sehr erfreut
Milan Molto lieto
São Paulo Muito prazer
New York Nice to meet you
Mexico City Mucho gusto
Tokyo はじめまして
Seoul 처음 뵙겠습니다
Bangkok สวัสดีครับ
Beijing 很高兴认识你
Hanoi Xin chào
Jakarta Salam kenal
Kuala Lumpur Selamat berkenalan
Paris Enchanté
Berlin Freut mich
Rome Piacere
Lisbon Prazer
London Pleased to meet you
Madrid Un placer
Osaka よろしく
Busan 반갑습니다
Chiang Mai ยินดีที่ได้รู้จัก
Shanghai 幸会
Ho Chi Minh City Rất hân hạnh
Surabaya Senang berkenalan
Penang Salam perkenalan
Montreal Ravi de te rencontrer
Vienna Sehr erfreut
Milan Molto lieto
São Paulo Muito prazer

Why Cultran

Other translators swap words.
Cultran swaps meaning.

Run the same line through a typical app and through Cultran. The difference isn't a few extra words. It's whether the sentence lands at all.

You said · → translating to Japanese "Break a leg in there!"
Typical translator

「そこで足を折ってください。」

"Please break your leg in there."
Problem: Translates the idiom literally. Sounds like a threat.
Cultran

「頑張って!」

"Do your best!" — natural casual encouragement
What it caught: Recognizes the idiom and picks the closest cultural equivalent.

Context, not just text

Cultural context. Formality. Age.

Cultran picks how it phrases things based on who you are and who you're speaking to.

Informal Formal
👩🏻 Younger
お会計いい? Casual + young — among friends
お会計お願いします。 Polite + young — peers, cafe staff
👴🏼 Senior
お会計、頼むね。 Casual + older — softened familiar
お会計をお願いいたします。 Polite + older — full keigo
👩🏻 Younger
계산해 줘. Casual + young — direct with a friend
계산해 주세요. Polite + young — natural service request
👴🏼 Senior
계산 좀 부탁해요. Softened + older — familiar but respectful
계산 부탁드리겠습니다. Formal + older — deferential request

Same intent. Four readings of the room.

Try a phrase

Watch the same sentence change intention.

EN · 🇺🇸

"Could you take a photo for me?"

Tone
Age

Polite default. Younger stranger or public setting.

JA · 🇯🇵 Formal · Younger

写真を撮ってもらえますか？

shashin o totte moraemasu ka?

"Could you take a photo for me?"

'Moraemasu ka?' politely asks to receive the favor. This is natural for asking a stranger without sounding too stiff.
KO · 🇰🇷 Formal · Younger

사진 좀 찍어 주실 수 있어요?

sajin jom jjigeo jusil su isseoyo?

"Could you take a photo for me?"

'Jusil su isseoyo?' uses the honorific marker and polite ending to make the request natural with a stranger.

14 languages

Translate wherever you go. Across cities, countries, and continents.

Every language ships with full cultural context, handed down the right way.

  • English English
  • Filipino Filipino
  • Français French
  • Deutsch German
  • Bahasa Indonesia Indonesian
  • Italiano Italian
  • 日本語 Japanese
  • 한국어 Korean
  • Bahasa Melayu Malay
  • 中文 Mandarin Chinese
  • Português Portuguese
  • Español Spanish
  • ไทย Thai
  • Tiếng Việt Vietnamese

How it works

Your voice.
Their language.
Fast.

State of the art speech recognition and AI translation. A natural conversation that happens in two languages in real time.

01

Speak naturally.

State-of-the-art speech recognition: Listens to your voice and transcribes it into text, which is then sent to our AI.

02

Our model thinks first.

Our AI understands the context: Who you are, who you're talking to and what you're really asking. Then it generates the correct translation, vocabulary, and tone.

03

They hear you, clearly.

A natural spoken translation that sounds human, with readable cultural notes when they actually help.

Point. Translate.

Take a picture. Get the meaning.

Menus, signs, prescription labels, station maps, etc.
Aim your camera at any text and get the translation, culturally smoothed, never just word-for-word.

本日のおすすめ오늘의 추천 味噌ラーメン · 980円김치찌개 · 9,000원
Scanning
🇯🇵 JA → 🇺🇸 EN 🇰🇷 KO → 🇺🇸 EN
Today's specialToday's special

Miso ramen · ¥980

Kimchi stew · ₩9,000

Text mode

Can't talk? Just write.

A loud train station, a quiet temple, a sore throat...
Type your sentence and Cultran translates it the same way it would translate your voice, with the same tone and context.

🇺🇸 EN → 🇯🇵 JA 🇺🇸 EN → 🇰🇷 KO

Where's the nearest pharmacy?

32 / 280

Research has shown for years that off-the-shelf translation systems miss honorifics, idioms, gender, and tone. We all communicate differently.

What the research says

Translation is hard.
These gaps are well-documented.

Korean

Korean translation systems struggle with honorifics because the correct form depends on social context: age, rank, intimacy, and who is speaking to whom.

Hwang et al., 2021 — "A Study on Neural Machine Translation of Korean Honorifics" ↗
Mandarin

Generic Machine Translation can preserve the literal meaning while losing cultural tone, persuasion, and local nuance, especially in travel and tourism contexts.

Chen & Lin, 2025 — "Evaluating Machine Translation and Generative AI in Chinese Tourism Translation" ↗
Japanese

Japanese often drops subjects and pronouns that are inferred from context, so sentence-level MT can insert the wrong “I,” “you,” “he,” “she,” or miss who is doing what.

Rikters & Nakazawa, 2024 — "Revisiting Context Choices for Context-aware Machine Translation" ↗
European languages

Traditional MT often forces a gender when English is ambiguous, e.g. “the nurse” or “my friend” becomes masculine or feminine even when the source does not specify it.

Garg et al., 2024 — "Generating Gender Alternatives in Machine Translation" ↗

Get Started Now

Meet Mochi,
your travel companion.

Mochi tags along on every trip and helps you set up Cultran so you can start communicating right away.

Cultran is built for real-world travel days: asking for help, reading menus, checking signs, and keeping tone natural when you do not share a language.

Quick answers

Translation for trips,
long stays, and remote work.

What is Cultran?

Cultran is a culture-aware translation app for travelers and digital nomads. It translates voice, camera, and typed text while accounting for meaning, tone, formality, and local context.

How is Cultran different from a literal translator?

Cultran is designed to translate what you mean, not just the words you say. It handles idioms, slang, politeness, age-aware phrasing, and cultural context that literal translation can miss.

Who is Cultran for?

Cultran is built for people navigating daily life in another language, including short-trip travelers, long-stay travelers, remote workers, and digital nomads.

Which languages does Cultran support?

Cultran supports 14 languages: English, Filipino, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese.

Does Cultran translate voice, camera, and text?

Yes. Cultran supports voice translation, camera translation for visible text such as signs and menus, and typed text translation for situations where speaking is not practical.

How does Cultran pricing work?

Subscription prices and availability are shown in the App Store and may vary by country, taxes, and store offers.

Pick your plan

Don't let language
get in the way.

Start with a free 24-hour pass: 10 translations on us.
Or pick the plan that fits your trip, long stay, or remote-work season.

Free to download Download on the App Store Join Android Beta

Subscription prices and availability are shown in the App Store and may vary by country, taxes, and store offers.