Let me start with a story: I was visiting Norway back in November 2024. It was really cold, and we decided to camp to see the Northern Lights. We did see the Northern Lights (wish list got checked, yay!). On our way back, I had to stop by a drug store to buy some painkillers because my girlfriend’s muscles were in extreme pain in the severe cold.
At that drug store, I was on the verge of breaking down in tears because I couldn’t explain to him what I needed. He neither spoke español (Si soy hispano) nor English. I knew about translation tools like Google Translate, but I ran out of internet data. That moment made me feel so embarrassed.
Later, I found that translation tools might need internet, but translation apps don’t need internet once you have downloaded the language you want to translate. From then on, I always download a translation app on my iPhone when I am visiting a foreign country, which comes in super handy.
Speaking of which, there is a sea of options when it comes to translation apps for iPhones. What are some of the best that will help you? I have tested a bunch of them, so let me share only the best ones with you.
1. Translate
If you are an iPhone user who prefers using native iOS apps, then Translate will be a perfect option for you. I have been using it on my iPhone, and so far, the experience has been pretty good (not great! More on that coming up). One of the best things about this app is its simplicity and accuracy (most of the time).
The other day, I wanted to test it out to its full capacity: since my mother tongue is Spanish, I reached out to Optimum en español customer service (basically, my reliable internet provider, which I have been using satisfactorily for the last three years) to pay the bill. It was a technical call, and there is no better way to test a translator than having it translate technical jargon. I spoke in English and asked the app to translate it into Spanish and speak to the representative on call.
How was it? It did well most of the time, but it struggled with some of the technical jargon. Having said that, that call helped me draw my conclusion. The conclusion: if you use this for basic stuff like buying painkillers from a drug store, it’s fine. But the app might struggle in the more complex conversations.
All in all, it is a wonderful translator app for your iPhone.
2. Google Translate
Mi hermano, this app isn’t for the faint-hearted (because you will be switching from the Apple ecosystem to Google’s). Anyway, why have I included Google Translate as the best translator app? Let me tell you.
It might be the best translator app on any phone, and rightly so. Google is a beast when it comes to software and data. Since it includes a lot of data on any language, Google Translate is inevitably great.
Cosas que más me gustan (the things I love the most) about this app are its features. Whether you need to translate in a conversation or you want the text to be displayed, you can do either with the help of Google Translate. As for the accuracy of translation, I have found it to be the most accurate. On top of that, it comes with a bunch of other features like eliminating hate speech from the output, which I really like.
I talked about the ease of use for Translate (iOS). How about the ease of use for Google Translate?
Honestly, if you need to translate simple texts, then it is easy to use. Just type in the text box, and it will translate. If you try to explore the app, it gets complicated. I mean, the app’s interface isn’t clunky until you try to mess with the settings. Apart from that, it is a really great app for translation, and I definitely recommend checking it out.
3. SayHi
This is the one that isn’t developed by any of the two giants (Apple and Google), but it still does a wonderful job of translating (mainly the text).
The first impression of the app is clean, and it seems like it is something that does the job. Well, yes, to some extent. I threw multiple languages at it to test it out, and lo hizo promedio (it did an okay-ish job). Speaking of the interface, on the initial screen, you will see two mics – each for the two languages you need to translate to and from.
The problem I had with SayHi was accents. For the Southern Italian accent, the app understood words differently, even though they were the same. The translation on the whole wasn’t highly accurate because of its limited vocabulary in certain languages, like Arabic.
However, the text translation did a wonderful job in translating even some of the complex sentence structures.
So, who do I recommend it to? I won’t recommend it for traveling because you might spend a lot of time typing the text in your native language. However, if you need to specifically translate the long texts, it can do the job.
Let me conclude this post by giving you the best choice: Google Translate is overall the best choice for iPhone users if they are willing to switch their ecosystem.