Apple Translate is already on your iPhone. SofiLingo is for the trips it doesn't cover.

The languages Apple's app leaves out

Apple's Translate app does not include Greek, Czech, Hungarian, Croatian or Romanian. SofiLingo translates all five, among 58 languages, so the menu in Athens, the tram sign in Prague and the parking notice in Split are read the same way as everything else.

Apple's list covers the big ones well, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Arabic among them, and iOS adds a few more languages for translating inside other apps. The five above are on neither list. All 58 languages, and what each one can do.

No signal: both work. The difference is the hard scripts.

Typing works offline in every one of the 58 languages. Download the ones you need over hotel wifi before you go. The camera reads most languages on the phone itself. Some scripts, like Greek, Russian and Hebrew, need a connection to read, so SofiLingo keeps the photo and finishes the translation the moment you are back online.

Apple Translate works offline too, once you download a language, and you can tell it to translate only on the phone. The difference is coverage: a language Apple's app does not have cannot be translated, online or off. What works with no internet.

A scan you can come back to

Every scan is kept in the app. Look the menu up again over dinner, or translate the same one into a different language later, as many times as you like and at no extra cost.

Apple's camera translation lets you freeze the picture and save or share the translated image. SofiLingo keeps the original scan as well, which is what lets you translate it again into another language.

Private either way

No account, no sign-up, no email address. Typed text and translations stay on your phone. Photos are sent for text recognition only in the languages the phone cannot read well, and only when there is a connection. What does and does not leave your phone.

Apple is careful here too. When both languages are downloaded it translates on the phone; otherwise a request may go to Apple's servers under a random identifier rather than your Apple Account, and you can choose to keep everything on the device. Either way your translations are in good hands.

What this page says about Apple Translate (its language list, offline translation, saving a camera translation and where it translates) was checked against Apple's own pages on 10 October 2026, with iOS 27.