How Real-Time AI Translation Works for Baduk Lessons

A teacher whose Go knowledge fits your goals may speak a different language from you. Translated captions can help you follow their explanation and ask questions while you work through a position together.

Baduk Teacher combines a shared Go board with speech recognition and translation. For example, a French-speaking student can read a Korean teacher’s explanation in French. This guide explains the workflow and its limits, so you know what to check before booking.

Last updated: 2026-09-27.

What you see in the lesson

In a lesson with a Korean teacher, choose your caption language and have the teacher enable their microphone. As the teacher speaks, two things happen in the panel next to the Go board:

Speech recognition produces text in the teacher’s language (Korean characters in this case). The transcript appears in the lesson panel.
A translation appears in your selected caption language, such as English, Chinese, Japanese, French or German.

Translated captions arrive after speech recognition and translation have processed the utterance. The delay varies with speech, connection quality and service response times. Keep the source-language text available when checking an unclear translation, and ask the teacher to repeat or type a key term if needed.

What's happening underneath

Four stages, roughly:

Capture. The teacher’s browser records short rolling chunks of their microphone audio in a standard WebM container. These chunks are streamed over a WebSocket to our server.
Speech recognition (ASR). The server forwards each audio chunk to a speech-recognition provider — currently Deepgram — configured for the teacher's spoken language. The provider returns text, both interim (best guess so far, updated as more audio arrives) and final (locked in once the speaker pauses).
Translation. Final transcript text is sent to the configured translation service. The LLM translation path uses Go terminology, instructions and examples to help interpret the lesson. The OpenRouter path waits for the complete response and checks its format before publishing the translation; that check does not guarantee the meaning is correct.
Display. The source-language transcript and translated text return to your browser and appear beside the board. A translation may appear as a complete line rather than typing out word by word.

Speech recognition and translation are separate steps: seeing a transcript does not mean its translation is ready. If a translation fails, the source text remains useful for asking the teacher to clarify.

Why Go context matters

A translation tool needs more than a language pair to handle a Go lesson well. The same word can describe a board concept or an everyday object.

Go vocabulary. Sente (先手) refers to keeping the initiative. Aji (味) refers to latent possibilities in a position, rather than the everyday meaning “taste.” Hane (ハネ) describes a bending move, and joseki (定石) a standard sequence. In Korean, 선수 can mean a player or sente, depending on context. A literal translation can obscure the point the teacher is making.

A shared position. Captions sit beside the board, so you can connect the explanation to the moves and ask the teacher to show a variation. If a phrase is unclear, pause on that position and ask for another explanation.

Other ways to learn. Subtitled recordings let you revisit an explanation, while live lessons let you ask follow-up questions about your own games. A human interpreter is another option, but requires coordinating an additional person and agreeing their fee. Choose the format that fits your learning needs and budget.

The Baduk-aware part

The LLM translation path includes several forms of Go-specific guidance. These help the model interpret lesson language, but do not eliminate mistakes.

A Baduk-aware system prompt. The model is told it is translating commentary from a Go lesson, including positions, moves, shapes and strategy. This gives ambiguous words a useful context.

Source-language disambiguation rules. Some words mean very different things inside a Baduk lesson than they do outside. The system prompt explicitly lists these. A few from Korean alone:

백 (baek) → "White" (the player or white stones). Not "100", not "back."
흑 (heuk) → "Black" (player or black stones).
집 (jip) → "territory" — area controlled on the board. Not "house."
모양 (moyang) → "shape" — the quality of a stone formation. Not "appearance."
선수 (seonsu) → "player" or "sente" depending on context. The prompt teaches the model to pick by context: "흑선수" is "the Black player"; "여기서 선수를 쳐야 합니다" is "you need to play sente here."

These examples show why context matters. If the translation suggests something that does not fit the board, check it with the teacher before treating it as a Go principle.

Go terminology guidance. The pipeline looks for glossary terms in the source text and supplies relevant entries to the translator. Terms such as joseki, atari and ko can need different treatment from ordinary words. The glossary guides the result; it is not a guarantee that every term or language pair will be translated correctly.

Examples for conversational language. Lessons include acknowledgements, questions and scheduling as well as board commentary. Translation instructions and examples help distinguish a phrase such as “OK, got it” from a comment about a move, so it can be translated as conversation.

Recent-conversation context. The LLM translation path can include recent lesson turns to help interpret references such as “this” or “that move.” Context can help resolve ambiguity, but the student and teacher still need to clarify unclear references on the board.

Honest limits

We will not tell you this is magic. A few real constraints:

Delay varies. Captions may lag behind the speaker. Pause between ideas and allow time to read and ask questions, especially during fast exchanges.
Audio quality matters. Background noise, overlapping voices and unclear speech can affect transcription. Use a quiet space and check your microphone with the teacher; clear audio still does not guarantee an accurate transcript.
Translations can be wrong or unavailable. Speech recognition can mishear a term, and translation can change its meaning or fail. Compare the source and translation where possible, and ask the teacher to type or demonstrate important points. A response-format check cannot verify a Go explanation.

Translation can make a lesson across languages easier to follow. Use the first lesson to check that you and the teacher can explain, question and clarify positions at a pace that works for both of you.

Explore translated lessons — browse our teacher roster. Check a teacher’s spoken languages and lesson options, then discuss your language needs before booking.

Where this is heading

Useful feedback identifies the phrase, intended meaning and lesson context. That can help reveal missing terminology or ambiguous instructions. Treat each correction as something to check with the teacher, rather than assuming the next translation will be right.

For help choosing a learning format, read our companion guide on how to learn Baduk online. For a lesson across languages, check both the teacher’s approach and whether you can communicate comfortably together.