Translation is rarely about matching words exactly. Its real test lies in conveying intention, tone, and emotional weight. Can This Love Be Translated?, Netflix’s Korean romantic drama, builds its story around that fragile space between meaning and emotion, then asks whether love can be understood when it is constantly filtered through language.
Since its global debut, the series has moved fast on Netflix’s rankings, opening at No. 2 on the Global Top 10 Non-English TV list. For broader context on what’s trending across the platform right now, see our running tracker Netflix Top 10 shows in the world, updated as the charts shift. Here is everything you need to know about Can This Love Be Translated? – from the plot and cast to reviews and release date. The trailer is at the bottom of the article.
Can This Love Be Translated?: All the key details
- Title: Can This Love Be Translated?
- Original title: 사랑도 번역이 되나요?
- Format: Limited series
- Episodes: 12
- Genre: Romance, Drama
- Country: South Korea
- Original language: Korean
- Release date: January 16, 2026
- Writers: Hong Jung-eun, Hong Mi-ran
- Director: Yoo Young-eun
- Lead cast: Kim Seon-ho, Go Youn-jung, Sota Fukushi
- Produced by: Netflix
What Can This Love Be Translated? is about
Can This Love Be Translated? follows Joo Ho-jin (Kim Seon-ho), a celebrated interpreter who has built his life around linguistic precision and emotional restraint. He trusts clarity, exactness, and control, preferring the complexity of language to the unpredictability of vulnerability.
His routine changes when he accepts a high-profile job interpreting for Romantic Trip, a reality dating show designed around one impossible premise: pairing two actors who do not share a common language and sending them to romantic destinations around the world to see whether connection can form anyway.
On the production, Ho-jin is reunited with Cha Mu-hee (Go Youn-jung), a woman he once met in Japan before her career erupted into global fame. Mu-hee now stars on Romantic Trip opposite Japanese actor Hiro (Sota Fukushi), with Ho-jin translating every exchange for the cameras. As he becomes the bridge between two hearts, he discovers his own feelings are the hardest thing he’s ever tried to interpret.
Who wrote and directed Can This Love Be Translated?
The series is written by Hong Jung-eun and Hong Mi-ran, the Hong sisters, and directed by Yoo Young-eun. Netflix frames the drama’s central hook as emotional: translation isn’t simply a tool for communication here, but the pressure point that shapes intimacy, hesitation, and misunderstanding across borders. The show’s globe-trotting structure is part of its storytelling engine, moving from Japan to Korea, Canada, and Italy, with each location reshaping the characters’ proximity and emotional risk.
Can This Love Be Translated? cast: the main characters
Kim Seon-ho plays Ho-jin as a man who excels at understanding others but struggles to decode himself. In a Tudum cast interview, he sums up the show’s emotional thesis in one line: “Everyone has their own language.”
Go Youn-jung portrays Mu-hee as both composed and quietly isolated, a star who is constantly seen but rarely fully understood. Reflecting on the couple’s dynamic, she told Tudum: “They don’t always understand each other, yet nevertheless they learn how to understand each other’s hearts.”
Sota Fukushi plays Hiro, Mu-hee’s partner on Romantic Trip, adding a third emotional perspective that keeps the translation dynamic tense and human, especially as Ho-jin’s professional distance becomes harder to maintain.
Netflix global charts: where Can This Love Be Translated? ranks
In its debut week, Can This Love Be Translated? ranked No. 2 on Netflix’s Global Top 10 Non-English TV.
What reviews say about Can This Love Be Translated?
Critical coverage for Can This Love Be Translated? is still taking shape, but early responses from industry outlets point to the series’ restraint as its most distinctive strength. Rather than treating translation as a narrative hook or novelty, the show frames it as an emotional filter, allowing misinterpretation, pauses, and unresolved tension to quietly shape the romance.
In its early assessment, Variety highlighted the series’ refusal to overplay its premise, noting how the drama leans into emotional precision and character-driven pacing instead of heightened melodrama. The emphasis, as the outlet suggests, is on implication rather than exposition, trusting viewers to engage with what remains unsaid.
A similar note emerges from The Hollywood Reporter, which points to the show’s confidence in stillness and emotional timing. Rather than escalating conflict through plot twists, the series allows intimacy to evolve through proximity, repetition, and emotional hesitation — a choice that aligns it more closely with slow-burn relationship dramas than conventional rom-com structures.
Audience response reinforces that critical framing. The series’ swift climb to No. 2 on Netflix’s Global Top 10 Non-English TV chart, as tracked via Netflix Tudum, indicates that viewers are not merely sampling the concept but staying with its measured rhythm. In this case, chart momentum functions less as hype and more as evidence that the show’s understated storytelling is resonating with a global audience..
Why watch Can This Love Be Translated?
If you enjoy romances driven by subtext, emotional timing, and character psychology, Can This Love Be Translated? fits naturally into that space. It’s less about grand gestures than the slow realization that intention can be misunderstood even when the words are “right.” If you’re building a Netflix romance queue, you may also like No Tail To Tell, a Korean fantasy rom-com with a mythical twist. For a different kind of Korean series energy, see Undercover Miss Hong, the retro Korean series now streaming on Netflix.
Can This Love Be Translated? release date on streaming
Available now. Can This Love Be Translated? is already streaming on Netflix, where it is currently attracting strong viewer attention. Release date: January 16, 2026. Watch on Netflix.
Watch the trailer
The official trailer below offers a first look at the tone, setting, and emotional stakes.
