Can I log my workout in my own language?

The short answer

• The interface is English only. No translated screens, no localised exercise names. If you want the app itself in your language, this is not that app.
• What you say can be in any language. You hold the mic, talk through the session you just finished, and the exercises, sets, reps and weights get written down.
• There is nothing to select first. No language picker, no list to be on. You press record and talk.
• Mixing languages is expected. Saying a machine name in English in the middle of a sentence in another language is the normal case, not a failure case.
• Your own wording is kept. The exercise is matched and stored under its English name, and the phrase you actually said is saved next to it.
• Nothing saves until you read it. Every spoken log lands on a review screen first, which matters more in a second language, not less.
• $4.17 a month (billed $49.99 a year) after a 3-day trial. Also $7.99 a month or $3.99 a week. iPhone only.

What is in English, and what is not

Say it plainly, because plenty of apps are vague about this. SayLift is not translated. There is one interface language and it is English. The Today tab, the settings, the 873 exercise guides and the names of the movements are all English, and they stay English no matter what you speak.

Two things in the app take any language: the voice logger, and the paste-in routine import. Both of those send what you gave them to a model that is told to expect any language. Everything else is a fixed English screen.

So the honest version of the pitch is narrow. This is not an app for someone who struggles to read English at all. It is an app for the very large group of people who read English fine, think in another language, and know the machines at their gym by a word that is not the English one. If that is you, the hard part of logging was never reading the screen. It was turning what you just did into form fields in a language you have to translate into first.

There is no language to pick

The most useful thing to know about how this works is what is missing from it. There is no language setting anywhere in the app, no supported-languages list, and no step before you record. You hold the mic and talk.

That comes from how the model is instructed. It is told the speech can be in any language, that languages are often mixed inside the same sentence, and that gym and machine names are frequently said in English in the middle of a sentence in another language. It is also told that numbers may be spoken in any language. So a sentence that starts in one language, names a cable machine in English, and counts the reps in a third, is the case it was written for.

The reason this matters more than a picker would is that a picker is a thing to get wrong. You switch gyms, you train with a friend, you start a sentence one way and finish it another. A setting you chose in week one would then be wrong in week six, and you would have to notice and fix it between sets. Nothing to choose means nothing to choose badly.

Two names are kept for every exercise

This is the piece that makes the whole arrangement hold together, so it is worth explaining properly rather than waving at.

When you speak an exercise, the model returns two things. The first is a short English translation of the phrase, and that is what the exercise database is searched and matched on. The second is your phrase exactly as you said it, in the original language, kept in a field of its own.

The English name is the one your history files under. That is deliberate. Your records, your volume, your charts and the coach's next target all read from one consistent name, so saying the same movement three different ways over three months does not split it into three exercises with a third of the history each. The phrase you actually use is not thrown away, though. It is remembered alongside.

Every qualifier you say survives the translation. Grip width and grip direction, incline or decline or flat, seated or standing or lying or bent-over, one-arm or alternating, the bar path, the attachment you clipped on. The model is told it may not drop one you said, add one you did not, or swap one for its opposite. A wide pulldown you spoke cannot come back as a close-grip one.

It also learns your words. A phrase you confirm once is saved, and up to 30 confirmed phrases travel with every later recording. So the nickname your gym uses for a machine, or the word for it in your language, gets corrected once and matched automatically after that. Give it a few weeks and the app is speaking your gym's dialect back to you.

• Sets come out one per set. "Three sets of ten at fifty" becomes three sets. Changing weights are kept as they were: 50 by 12, then 55 by 10, then 60 by 8.
• No unit said, app unit used. If you say a weight without saying kg or lbs, it uses the unit set in the app, and it never converts the number you said into the other one.
• Set types only when you say them. A warm-up, a drop set or a set taken to failure gets tagged because you said so. A light weight on its own is not assumed to be a warm-up.
• It will not invent a number. Anything you did not say stays blank for you to fill in.
• Past work is not logged twice. Mention a session you did yesterday and it stays a mention. Only what you did this session goes in.

A page for your language

Four languages have a page of their own, with real gym vocabulary and worked sentences you can copy. Start with the one you speak.

• Arabic: the Gulf dialect case is written into the shipped prompt by name, including the Arabic words for a warm-up, so this is the best-supported case on the list.
• Spanish: how a session sounds when you count in Spanish and say the machine in English, which is how most people in the gym actually talk.
• Hindi: Hindi sentences with English lift names inside them, and what the review screen shows you afterwards.
• Portuguese: Brazilian and European wording for the same movements, and the kg default that goes with both.

If your language has no page here

Then nothing changes, because there is no list to be on. The model is never told which language to expect, so your language is not handled by being in a lookup table somewhere. Those four pages exist because they are worth writing examples for, not because they are the four that work.

The honest caveat is about accuracy rather than support. How well a recording is read depends on the language, your accent, how fast you talk, and how loud the gym is. A clear sentence in a quiet corner does better than a mumbled one next to the squat rack with music on. That is true in English too, and it is more true the further you get from English.

Which is why the review screen is the real answer here. Nothing is written to your history until you look at the parsed sets and tap save. Treat the first week as a test: speak a session, read what came back, correct what is wrong. Every correction you confirm is saved and fed back in next time, so the errors you see in week one are mostly the ones you only see once.

What the other gym apps do about this

The useful comparison is not which app has the most translated screens. It is whether there is any way to log by talking at all, because that is the step that a second language makes expensive. The rest of this category is built around tapping.

For the full voice comparison, including the workarounds like keyboard dictation and Siri Shortcuts, see the best app for logging a workout by voice. This page only covers the language side of it.

How to set it up in SayLift

1. 1Install SayLift on an iPhone and start the 3-day trial. There is nothing to configure for language, because there is no language setting.
2. 2Set kg or lbs in Settings. This is the unit used when you say a weight without naming one, and your number is never converted into the other unit.
3. 3Finish your workout first. Then open the voice logger and talk through the whole session in whatever language you were thinking in, mixing in English machine names wherever that is how you say them.
4. 4Read the review screen. Check the exercises, the number of sets, the reps and the weights, and only then save. Nothing reaches your history before that.
5. 5Correct anything the matcher got wrong, once. The phrase you confirm is saved, and up to 30 confirmed phrases ride along with later recordings, so the same word is matched for you next time.
6. 6Paste in the plan you already have, in any language, if a coach or a chat thread gave you one. Messy formatting is fine. Routine import covers how that works, and you can dictate the plan out loud instead.
7. 7Open the Today tab before your next session. Each exercise shows one action with the working weight attached, read from the sets you logged and worked out on the phone, so it is the same whatever language you spoke.

The limits, stated once

• Voice logging needs a connection and is capped at 10 recordings an hour and 20 a day. Manual logging, your history, the coach's targets and all 873 exercise guides work offline.
• The interface stays English. The shipping app has one interface language, and the exercise names in it are English too.
• iPhone only, iOS 17 and up. No Android, iPad, Apple Watch or web version.
• Paid after a 3-day trial: $4.17 a month (billed $49.99 a year), $7.99 a month, or $3.99 a week.
• Supersets are not grouped. Two exercises done back to back stay two exercises, and the pairing goes in as a note.
• No Apple Health sync, and the app is new enough to have no App Store ratings yet.

Who SayLift is for

• You read English fine but think in another language. The screens will not slow you down. Logging in your head first, then translating into a form, did.
• Your gym has its own words. Machine nicknames, a mix of English and your language in one sentence, numbers however they come out. Say it that way and correct it once.
• You already have a program. The coach reads your logged sets and names the next weight. It does not rewrite your split. See how it picks the weight.
• You want your hands free between sets. That is the whole reason the voice logger exists: hands-free logging.
• Not for you if you need the app itself in your language, you are on Android, or your gym has no signal at the moment you want to speak. Manual logging still works offline, and it is typing.