Foreign-language ingredient labels: which languages AllergenLens reads

Shopping abroad, or buying imported food at home, often means a label in a language you don't read well. AllergenLens reads the list on your iPhone and checks it against your profile, whichever of its supported languages the list is in. This post covers which languages that means, how other-language names are matched, and what the app says when it meets a language it can't read.

The languages it reads

The allergen word list inside the app has ingredient terms for nine label languages:

Text recognition comes from Apple's on-device engine, and some languages, including Polish and Swedish, need a recent version of iOS for it. The Polish, Portuguese and Swedish lists are newer than the others and are still being reviewed by native speakers, so take extra care with those labels.

Accents and capitals don't matter: CACAHUETE and cacahuète are treated the same. In German and Dutch, where words are joined together, the list looks for the allergen inside longer words, so a compound such as Vollmilchpulver still counts as milk.

Every language applies to every label

You don't pick a label language. AllergenLens applies the terms from all nine languages to every list it reads. That matters on multilingual packs, where the same list is printed in three or four languages, and on imported food where only the allergen line is translated.

The live scanner also recognises the ingredient heading in several languages, such as Ingredientes, Zutaten, Ingrédients, Ingredienti and Ingrediënten, to help you frame the list. Other names and E-numbers work across languages too. An E-number such as E322 is the same code on a Spanish pack as on a British one. More on that in E-numbers and unclear words.

When part of the label is skipped

Many European packs print the ingredients in several languages, some of which AllergenLens can't read yet, such as Danish, Finnish, Czech, Hungarian, Greek or Turkish. The app recognises the heading of those lists so it can tell you what happened, instead of quietly ignoring them:

• If it also found a list in a language it reads, you see Part of the label is in a language AllergenLens can't read yet, so it was skipped. The list in a language it reads was checked. Where it can name the language, it does: The text in … was skipped.
• If the only list is in a language it can't read, the result is Couldn't read clearly. The message says nothing on that list was checked and suggests looking for the list in another language on the pack.
• If it can't tell what language the list is in, it says so and checks nothing on that list.

A skipped part also shows in the coverage note under the result. The four result states and coverage messages are explained in results and coverage.

Shopping while you travel

Abroad, AllergenLens is useful in two directions. Reading: scan the label in the supermarket and see what matches your profile, in any of the nine languages. Explaining: if you need to tell a café or a host what you avoid, Plus has travel allergy cards with fixed phrases in several languages that you can show full screen, even offline.

The app's own language

The AllergenLens interface is available in more languages than it can read on labels. If your iPhone is set to one of those, such as Danish or Finnish, the Scan tab tells you AllergenLens can't read labels in this language yet and lists the languages it does read, so you know to look for a list in one of them.

FAQ

Download AllergenLens before your next trip abroad.