tolkaGet Tolka
Interpreter & advisor · iPhone

The interpreter
on your side.

Tell it where you are. It hears them, tells you what they actually mean, and hands you what to say next.

Get TolkaSee it work
  • First 30 translations free — no account, no card
  • Audio is never stored
  • From $5.99 a week. Every plan is the whole app
A garage, two hundred kilometres from anywhere

He says it needs a new wheel bearing.

Something expensive, in a language you don't have, and a decision expected now. Tolka gives you his words — and what he is actually proposing.

Tolka at a mechanic. A card headed 'What's happening' reads: the mechanic says the front wheel bearing is worn and suggests replacing it today. Below it, his sentence in English, the original Portuguese underneath, and a note: he's proposing a repair on the spot — ask the price first, and whether it's safe to drive home.

What he said, what he meant, and the question to ask before you nod.

Two in the morning, in a hospital corridor

Nobody here has time to explain.

Turn the phone around. They read their own words as they speak, in their own language, and fix anything it misheard. Turn it back and you get what it meant.

Their screen. Their language. Two buttons, and nothing of yours to read.

A town hall, forty minutes into the wait

They called your name. You didn't hear it.

Tolka can listen to the whole room and stay quiet until something is about to concern you. Then it taps you on the shoulder.

A card headed 'Room listening' reads: they're calling you to counter 4. A clerk just called your name — it's your turn at counter number 4, to your right. The Portuguese it heard is quoted underneath.

Heard across the room while the phone was in your pocket.

Situations, not chats

And it remembers where you are.

A situation is a place and a problem, not a session that dies when you close the app. Come back next week and it still knows what the doctor said.

Tolka's home screen: saved situations — Hospital, Pharmacy, Mechanic — each showing its two languages, the note you gave it, and when you last used it.

  • It spans visits

    Three days in a maternity ward is one situation, not thirty conversations.

  • It argues your corner

    Ask “is that reasonable?” and it weighs what they proposed against everything said so far.

  • It hands you the next line

    Two or three things you would actually want to say right now, one tap each.

  • Tax office“Which form, and by when?”
  • Doctor“What is he actually telling me?”
  • Landlord“What am I signing here?”
  • School“What do they need from us?”
  • Bank“Why was it refused?”
  • Garage“Do I really need this repair?”
  • Pharmacy“How do I explain the symptoms?”
  • Town hall“Which documents do they want?”
  • Market“Just… where is the ketchup?”
Why you can trust it

Tolka can be wrong.

That is why it is built the way it is:

  • When it isn't sure, it says so. A confident-sounding wrong answer is the worst thing this app could do.
  • When a moment could really cost you — consent, a diagnosis, police, a contract — it says plainly: get a professional interpreter.
  • Every phrase you hold up comes with a literal back-translation, so you know what you are showing someone.
  • Audio is never stored. It is used as it's heard and discarded. Conversations stay on your phone.

No translation app tells you to go and find a human. We think that is exactly why you will trust the one that does.

Why Tolka exists

Born in a delivery room

A Danish couple, a maternity hospital in Portugal, a room full of European Portuguese, and decisions that could not wait for the words to catch up. What got built that week did not just translate — it explained what was happening, and said when it was time to ask for a real interpreter.

That is still all it tries to be: the friend who speaks the language and stands next to you.

Pricing

Pick the shape of your stay.

Not how much you think you'll use it — nobody can guess that before their first conversation.

Week

$5.99per week

A holiday, or a work trip

Cancel any time, in Settings. One tap, no email to write.

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Month

$14.99per month

A longer stay, or living abroad

Cancel whenever. The hard months are the ones it is for.

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Every plan is the whole app — nothing is held back on the cheaper one. The first 30 translations are free, with no account and no card, and every plan renews until you cancel it.

Straight answers

Questions worth asking

Does the other person need the app?
No. They need about four seconds and a screen pointed at them. Everything they read is already in their language, and the only two buttons say “done” and “fix a mistake”.
Which languages, and does it work without a signal?
You pick a pair per situation: your language, and theirs. The list comes from what your iPhone can transcribe on-device, so Europe is well covered and parts of Asia are not. Speech is transcribed on the device, so their words still appear live with no signal — the interpretation and the advice need a connection. Download your language over wifi before you travel, not in the waiting room.
Is my conversation stored anywhere?
Audio is never written to disk, ever — it is transcribed and discarded. Transcripts stay on your phone, in the situation they belong to, until you delete them. No cloud, no analytics, no account to create.
Can I rely on it for something serious?
No — and it will tell you so itself. For consent, a diagnosis, a legal matter or a large sum, Tolka stops and recommends a professional interpreter. It is built for the other ninety-five per cent of a life lived in another language.
Why not just use ChatGPT?
You can, and for a single sentence it works. It falls apart in the room: you cannot hand your chat history to a nurse and have her read it, you re-explain your situation every time, and it will never tell you to go and find a human interpreter instead.
Can I try it before paying?
Yes. The first 30 translations are free, with no account and no card. That is a real errand — enough to find out whether handing someone your phone actually works, which is the part you cannot judge from a screenshot.
Is there a usage limit?
Fair use is about 200 translations a day, and it exists to bound one pathological case rather than to sort customers — a heavy expat lands around a third of it. If you reach it, translation keeps working; the optional extras pause first. Cutting off an interpreter in a pharmacy to protect a margin would be the worse failure.
iPhone only?
For now, yes. Tolka leans on the iPhone's on-device speech recognition, which is what keeps audio off the internet entirely.

The next difficult room

You already know which one it is.
The first 30 translations are free.

Get Tolka