Set up for offline in one step. When you first open SofiLingo it now offers the languages you are most likely to need and downloads them there and then, so they work with no signal at all. Search all 58, or skip it and download later from the language picker. Live translation no longer stops unexpectedly during a conversation.

Small improvements.

Buying or restoring the Holiday pass now applies it straight away. Also an updated payments library and a clearer App Store page.

SofiLingo now speaks Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Turkish and Ukrainian. If your phone is set to one of them, the app opens in it. Arabic reads right to left throughout, and a translation into Arabic, Hebrew, Persian or Urdu now reads right to left on your photos too. Latin American Spanish gets its own wording where it matters: Settings is "Configuración", as your iPhone calls it. The directions to Apple's better voices now use the names iOS 26 gives each screen, in every language.

SofiLingo is now in Chinese, both Simplified and Traditional. Your phone decides which: a phone set up in Taiwan or Hong Kong gets Traditional, one set up on the mainland or in Singapore gets Simplified. Language names now read in your own language, with each language's own name beside it — 西班牙语 español — so you can find yours, and so can the person you hand the phone to. The app opens on your phone's language instead of always starting in English. Fixed: a phone set to a language SofiLingo does not have was showing German. It shows English now. New in 1.1.5: SofiLingo can be opened from a link, so App Store events take you straight into the app.

SofiLingo is now in Chinese, both Simplified and Traditional. Your phone decides which: a phone set up in Taiwan or Hong Kong gets Traditional, one set up on the mainland or in Singapore gets Simplified. Language names now read in your own language, with each language's own name beside it — 西班牙语 español — so you can find yours, and so can the person you hand the phone to. The app opens on your phone's language instead of always starting in English. Fixed: a phone set to a language SofiLingo does not have was showing German. It shows English now.

Live translation now works on devices that cannot recognise speech offline, such as older iPads — it uses the internet there, and says so on screen. Speech is recognised using your phone's own region. An Irish phone is heard as Irish English rather than whichever variant the device happened to offer first, which makes transcription more accurate. Fixed: a message asking you to switch Dictation on when it was already on.

Watch a short video and get another 15 translations — as many times as you like. There is no longer a limit on this, and the offer appears every time your free translations run out, beside the Holiday pass. Fixed: translations earned from a video were added to your total but could not actually be used, so the counter went back up and the app still asked you to pay. They work now. Fixed on the Live translate screen: a language that still had to be downloaded said so, and then pressing Start did nothing at all — and after changing the language it went on naming the old one. The notice now carries a Download button that fetches the language and begins listening. Choosing a language you have not downloaded yet takes one tap instead of two. It downloads, and it is the language you are then using.

New: reply without stopping. Tap the language under the transcript to turn the conversation round, say your answer, and tap back. The other person sees their own language on the button, so nobody has to guess whose turn it is. Translations of spoken sentences are more accurate, and lines no longer repeat themselves when the phone revises what it heard. This version also introduces advertising. Two screens carry one ad — your saved translations, and a saved translation opened from the list. The Holiday pass removes them.

New: live translation. Put the phone near whoever is speaking and read what they say in your language, a moment after they say it. Have it read aloud through earbuds if you would rather listen. Nothing is recorded. The conversation is translated and then it is gone.

Translations are now read aloud in the best voice installed on your phone rather than the basic one. If that is all your phone has, SofiLingo tells you where a better one comes from — it is a free download.

Fixed the microphone on phones with no offline dictation for your language. SofiLingo now falls back to online speech recognition instead of failing, and if neither is available it tells you which dictation language to add.

After a translation, SofiLingo may now ask you to rate it. It asks no more than three times, and never again once you have.

• Rate SofiLingo straight from the home screen. • Free up space by removing languages you no longer need: when choosing a language, tap Remove beside any you've downloaded. Each is about 30 MB, and you can download it again over Wi-Fi.