LiveSub
Watch Japanese news livestreams and press conferences with English subtitles (free)
Published: 2026-10-14 ・ Updated: 2026-10-26
Works in Chrome or Edge on a computer (Firefox: through a microphone or audio input; not on phones). Japanese ⇄ English only.
Japanese TV news channels stream on YouTube, and many press conferences and official briefings are streamed live too. When something is happening in Japan, these streams are often the fastest source.
They are also in Japanese, usually without English captions, and the presenters speak quickly.
This guide shows how to get live English subtitles on Japanese news streams and press conferences playing in your browser. It is free, and there is nothing to install.
What you'll learn
- Why news is one of the easier cases for live subtitles
- How to subtitle a Japanese news stream or press conference, step by step
- What to do about names and on-screen text
In short: open the news stream in Chrome or Edge on your computer, open LiveSub in another tab, set it to Japanese → English, and share the stream's tab. The Japanese and an English translation appear as subtitles about one to two seconds behind the speaker.
Why news works well
News is one of the easier cases for speech recognition. Announcers speak clearly, one at a time, in standard Japanese, and there is little background music while they talk. Press conferences are similar: one speaker at a microphone, then questions.
The hard parts are names of people, places and organisations, which change with every story, and the on-screen text, which carries a lot of the information in Japanese news. More on both below.
What you need and how it works
- Chrome or Microsoft Edge on a computer. In Firefox, LiveSub listens through a microphone or a loopback audio input (such as Windows Stereo Mix); news streams on YouTube also work with LiveSub for Firefox. Safari uses the same input method but is untested
- Not a phone or tablet. Mobile browsers cannot share tab audio
- The stream playing in a browser tab. Not a TV or a phone app
- A one-time download of the speech recognition model. For Japanese, the Balanced setting is about 590MB; after the first time, it is loaded from your browser's storage
No account, no payment, and no time limit.
LiveSub is a website. You share one browser tab's audio with it. It recognises the Japanese speech on your own computer, translates it with the browser's built-in on-device translator, and shows the Japanese and the English as subtitles. The audio is not uploaded anywhere. Because it works from the sound, it does not matter whether the stream has captions.
Step by step
1. Set the direction and try the how-to video
Open LiveSub in Chrome. Under "Translate from / to", choose Japanese → English. If you leave it on English → Japanese, you get garbled text instead of subtitles.
Press "Try the how-to video (no sharing)". It plays a short how-to video in Japanese and shows subtitles without sharing any tab, and it gets the one-time download out of the way.
2. Choose a recognition setting
Under "Recognition setting", Balanced keeps up with a live stream and is the right choice for most people.
If your computer has a powerful GPU, Japanese-tuned mishears less, including names. The first download is about 730MB, and it only appears when your browser can use the GPU.
3. Share the stream's tab
Open the news stream in another tab. Back in LiveSub, press "Start (share a tab)". In Chrome's sharing dialog:
- Pick the "Chrome Tab" section at the top
- Choose the tab playing the stream
- Tick "Also share tab audio" at the bottom left
- Press Share
4. Read along
Subtitles appear about one to two seconds after the words are spoken. Press "Show in a floating window" to keep them in a small window on top, so the stream can stay large. You can scroll back in the window to reread a line you missed.
Or skip the sharing step
The free LiveSub extension for Chrome (it also installs in Microsoft Edge) shows the subtitles directly over the video when you press its icon on the stream's tab.
Tips for news
Put the names in the word list first
If you are following one story, the same names come up again and again: the people involved, the place, the company or ministry.
Open "Word list" and add them, one per line (Japanese entries need at least 3 characters, English ones 4). Recognition errors on those words are corrected to your spelling. To choose how a name appears in the translation too, write it as "たなか = Tanaka".
Save the transcript
"Download transcript" saves the Japanese and the English with timestamps. For a long press conference, that lets you go back to what was said about a particular point.
Keep an eye on the screen
Japanese news shows key facts as on-screen text: headlines, numbers, names, maps. LiveSub only hears the audio, so it does not translate any of that.
Honest limits
For emergencies such as earthquakes, tsunami warnings or evacuation orders, rely on official information in English, not on these subtitles.
- It is machine translation of a machine transcription. Most sentences come through well enough to follow the story, but a misheard word becomes a wrong translation
- About one to two seconds of delay behind the audio
- On-screen text is not translated, only speech
- Several people talking at once, such as panel discussions or crowded press conferences, reduce accuracy
- Reports from the scene with wind, sirens or crowd noise are harder than studio speech
- Computer only. It needs Chrome or Edge on a desktop or laptop
Wrapping up
News and press conferences suit live subtitles well: one clear speaker at a time, in standard Japanese. Add the names in the story to the word list, and keep watching the screen for the facts shown as text.
Open LiveSub on your computer and press "Try the how-to video (no sharing)" first, then share the news stream's tab.
About this guide: written by the maker of LiveSub. Steps, button names and figures are checked against the LiveSub app as of the date above. If something is wrong, please tell us through the contact page.