Tell Tolka the situation — the doctor, the tax office, the landlord. Turn the phone around and they read their own words as they speak. Turn it back and you get the translation, what they actually mean, and what to say next.
Recorded in the app. They speak, you understand, you answer — and when it matters too much, it says so.
You tell it where you are and what you need. Translations and explanations fit the moment — a maternity ward and a market stall don't speak the same way.
The other person watches their own words appear as they speak — dialect and all — and fixes what it got wrong, themselves.
It weighs what they propose against your situation, says plainly when something doesn't fit — and when a moment needs a professional.
Every other app assumes the other person will cooperate with a machine they cannot read. Tolka gives them a screen of their own — in their language.
Their screen. Their language. Their words, large.
No briefing, no translation, no advice, no buttons that might worry them. A stranger holding your phone should see one thing: what they just said, big enough to check at arm's length.
The buttons a pharmacist reads say Corrigir um erro, not “Fix a mistake”. Tolka translates its own interface once per language and remembers it — an English “Done” helps a Portuguese nurse no more than the transcript would.
Misheard through an accent? They tap Corrigir and say the wrong part again. Tolka rebuilds the sentence from what it heard and what they said to fix it. The error gets caught by the one person in the room who can tell it's an error.
No “now press translate”. Taking the phone back ends their turn and starts the interpretation in one move — because they already told you they were finished by giving it to you.
This is why the mechanic trusts it too. And a conversation only works when both people believe the thing in the middle.
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.
Three days in a maternity ward is one situation, not thirty conversations. Tolka knows what was said this morning — and knows it was this morning, not just now.
What you said is in the log too, with what it meant. Advice about what to say next is worthless if it doesn't know what you already said.
Ask “is that a reasonable suggestion?” and it weighs what they proposed against your situation and everything said so far — then says plainly if it doesn't fit.
Two or three things you'd actually want to say right now, one tap each — worked out from what was just said, not from a list of polite phrases.
Tolka earns its place where the same difficult rooms come round again — not on the one holiday afternoon you needed a menu translated.
The tax office, the school, the landlord, the bank, the doctor — the same handful of rooms, over and over, each one able to cost you real money or a month of waiting. Every visit is its own situation, and Tolka still remembers the last one.
Sitting with a mother or father at an appointment, translating badly, guessing at what the doctor meant. Tolka gives you the words and the meaning, and tells you when it's time to ask for a real interpreter instead.
A partner's parents, a kitchen table, and the strong wish not to be talked about in the third person. Turn the phone around; they see their own words and answer to you, not to your partner.
Most of a trip needs no help. Then something goes wrong — a clinic, a police report, a mechanic in a town you can't pronounce — and it becomes the only thing that matters that day.
And a chat assistant is fine at your desk. Neither of them is standing in the room with you.
Google Translate, Apple Translate, DeepL
Asking ChatGPT or Gemini to help
Built for the room you're standing in
Not how much you think you'll use it — nobody can guess that before their first conversation. Two weeks costs more than a month, and eight months costs more than a year, so the right plan is usually the obvious one.
A holiday, or a work trip
Cancel any time, in Settings. One tap, no email to write.
Get TolkaA longer stay, or a posting
Cancel whenever. The hard months are the ones it is for.
Get TolkaEvery plan is the whole app — nothing is held back on the cheaper ones. Fair use is about 200 translations a day, and if you reach it, translation keeps working. The first 30 are free, with no account and no card, and every plan renews until you cancel it.
That is why it is built the way it is:
And it stays quiet the rest of the time. A warning that fires over antihistamines teaches you to ignore the one that matters, so Tolka escalates on consequence, not on topic. Buying cough syrup is not a medical emergency — that is exactly what the app is for.
No translation app does this. We think that is exactly why you will trust the one that does.
Tolka started in a maternity hospital in Portugal. A Danish couple, a room full of European Portuguese, and decisions that could not wait for the words to catch up. The app that got built that week did not just translate — it explained what was happening, what the staff needed, and 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.
You already know which one it is.
The first 30 translations are free.