You’ve just moved to France. Your visa is sorted, you have a temporary address, and you’re ready to start building a real life here. Then you open the Ameli app to check your health insurance status and every single word is in French.

Not “mostly in French with an English toggle.” Not “French but with helpful icons.” Just… French. Dense, bureaucratic, administrative French — the kind they don’t teach you in Duolingo.

So you screenshot the screen. Open Google Translate. Upload the image. Squint at the translation. Switch back to Ameli. Try to remember which button said “attestation de droits.” Screenshot the next screen. Repeat.

Welcome to being an expat in France.

7.7 Million People, Same Problem

France is home to 7.7 million immigrants, according to the latest INSEE figures. About 170,000 Britons hold French residency cards. Over 13,000 Americans received their first French residency cards in 2024 alone — up 5% from the year before. And that’s just the official numbers, not counting students, digital nomads, or people on long-stay visas.

Every single one of them hits the same wall: the apps you need to function in France don’t speak your language.

This isn’t a tourist problem. Tourists need to translate a restaurant menu. You need to translate your tax declaration, your health insurance portal, your housing benefit application, and the mystery letter from your prefecture that arrived with no explanation and a two-week deadline.

The Apps You Can’t Avoid

Here’s the thing about France — the country runs on a specific ecosystem of apps and government portals that have no real alternative. You can’t just “use the English version” because there usually isn’t one. And you can’t skip them because they control your healthcare, your housing benefits, your taxes, and your legal right to stay in the country.

Ameli — Health Insurance

Ameli is your lifeline to the French healthcare system — reimbursements, insurance attestations, Carte Vitale status, and every interaction with CPAM (your local health insurance office).

The app is entirely in French. No English toggle. The Ameli website has a handful of English help pages, but the actual portal where you do things? French. The forms, notifications, reimbursement breakdowns, messages from your CPAM office — all French.

There’s technically an English helpline (09 74 75 36 46), but expats on the Ameli forum have reported it being unreachable for weeks. One user wrote that calls were “disconnected or routed to the French line” despite the number being listed as the English option.

When your Ameli account shows a red status message about your dossier and you can’t understand what it says, that’s not a minor inconvenience. That’s your healthcare.

CAF — Housing Benefits

The CAF handles housing assistance (APL), family benefits, and social benefits. If you’re renting in France, you almost certainly qualify for APL, which can knock a significant chunk off your monthly rent.

The entire application, website, app, and notifications are in French. When your application gets suspended — and it will, for some reason that isn’t immediately clear — the explanation arrives in French administrative language that would challenge native speakers.

There’s a multilingual helpline (+33 9 69 32 21 21, English is option 3), but the actual interface? Not a word of English.

Impots.gouv.fr — Taxes

Every resident of France has to file a tax declaration, even if your income is zero. The impots.gouv.fr portal has some English pages aimed at non-residents, but the actual tax filing interface — the one where you enter numbers that determine how much money the government takes — is entirely in French.

The terminology is dense. “Revenus fonciers,” “prelevement a la source,” “abattement forfaitaire” — this isn’t conversational French. It’s fiscal French, a dialect apparently designed to confuse even Parisians. Getting a number wrong because you misunderstood a field label isn’t a “whoops” situation. It’s a potential audit.

Prefecture Portals — Residence Permits

Your carte de sejour (residence permit) controls your legal right to stay. Renewing it means navigating your local prefecture’s website to book an appointment, upload documents, and track your application.

Every prefecture runs its own portal. None are in English. Appointment slots are notoriously scarce — in Paris and Lyon, getting a slot “can feel like winning the lottery.” The confirmation, document requirements, and the appointment itself are all in French. All foreign documents must be translated by a traducteur assermente (sworn translator) — you can’t bring your own translation.

Leboncoin — The French Craigslist

Leboncoin is France’s dominant classified ads platform — 1.5 million real estate listings alone. It’s where you find apartments, furniture, used cars, jobs, and basically anything you need when setting up a life.

There is no English version. The website and app are French-only. Browser translation can help on the web version, but the app? You’re on your own. And when you’re messaging sellers about a couch or responding to a rental listing, you need to understand what they wrote and reply in a way that makes sense.

Doctolib — Medical Appointments

The good news on this list. Doctolib supports English and you can filter for English-speaking doctors.

The catch: many doctor profiles and medical specialties still appear in French even with English selected. And once you’re at the appointment, the ordonnance (prescription) is in French, the pharmacy instructions are in French, and any follow-up through Ameli is — you guessed it — in French.

SNCF Connect — Train Booking

SNCF Connect has English language support, technically. You can change the language in your iPhone’s per-app settings (Settings > SNCF Connect > Preferred Language > English). But expats report that error messages pop up in French regardless of your language setting, and some screens don’t translate at all.

Everything Else

The list keeps going. EDF / Engie (utility bills) — the billing interface and app are in French despite an English helpline. Ile-de-France Mobilites (Paris transit / Navigo pass) — primarily French, and requires a European phone number. SeLoger / PAP (apartment hunting) — SeLoger has a partial English version; PAP is French-only. France Travail (job search, formerly Pole Emploi) — “only feasible if you read French well,” per their own docs. Vinted France — defaults to French based on your location with no manual override. La Poste, Allocine, Marmiton — French, French, French.

Why Browser Translation Doesn’t Cut It

For websites in a browser, Chrome’s built-in translator works reasonably well. Impots.gouv.fr through Chrome with auto-translate is usable, if imperfect.

But most of these services have dedicated apps. And when you’re in the Ameli app, or the CAF app, or Leboncoin’s app, there’s no browser translate button. You’re stuck with the screenshot-translate-switch-back loop that breaks your workflow every single time.

For a single quick lookup, that’s tolerable. For navigating a 12-step tax filing form, or working through a CAF application that asks for your “numero d’allocataire” and your “attestation de loyer” and your “releve d’identite bancaire” — it’s exhausting. You lose context between screens and the whole process takes three times longer than it should.

The Floating Overlay Approach

PiP Screen Translate puts a translation overlay directly on top of whatever app you’re using. It reads the French text on screen with OCR and shows you the English translation — without leaving the app, without screenshotting, without switching windows.

Open Ameli, start the overlay, and you can actually read what your CPAM is telling you. Scroll through your CAF notifications and understand why your APL payment is delayed. Navigate the impots.gouv tax form and know what each field is asking for while you’re filling it in.

It works with any app because it floats on top of whatever’s on your screen. Leboncoin listings, EDF bills, prefecture confirmation pages, mystery letters from your commune — the overlay reads and translates whatever’s visible.

Where It Helps Most

Government forms — Multi-step processes in Ameli, CAF, or impots.gouv where you need to understand each screen while interacting with it. The overlay keeps you in the app so you don’t lose your place.

Messaging on French platforms — Messages from Leboncoin sellers, CAF agents, or your landlord’s property manager. Screenshotting a conversation thread one message at a time is miserable.

Bills and statements — EDF factures, bank statements, CAF payment breakdowns. Numbers you can figure out, but the line items explaining those numbers are in French.

The long tail — Your commune’s local services app, the parking app that only exists in your arrondissement, your kid’s school portal. France has a deep ecosystem of apps that will never have English versions because they’re built for a French audience.

Where It Won’t Replace a Human

Legal documents — Your bail (lease), contrat de travail (employment contract), anything you’re signing. Use a traducteur assermente. Machine translation is not appropriate for documents with legal consequences.

Complex tax situations — If you have income in multiple countries or a non-standard situation, hire a bilingual accountant. The overlay helps you understand the interface, not French tax law.

Prefecture appointments and medical conversations — The overlay helps you prepare, but in-person interactions need actual French skills. Bring a French-speaking friend, or use Doctolib’s language filter to find English-speaking doctors.

The Bureaucracy Survival Kit

For navigating French apps — PiP Screen Translate overlay. Ameli, CAF, impots, Leboncoin, any app where you need to read the interface while using it.

For document translation — DeepL. It handles French bureaucratic language better than Google Translate. Paste that prefecture letter and get something you can parse.

For official documents — A traducteur assermente (sworn translator). Non-negotiable for anything you’re submitting to a government office.

For in-person interactions — Learn French. The overlay gets you through the first year, but France expects you to speak French. Even basic conversational French transforms your experience — with bureaucrats, with neighbors, with the person at the CAF counter who controls your housing benefits.

If you’re also navigating other countries’ apps — studying abroad or splitting time between France and Asia — the same overlay approach works across languages.

FAQ

Does this work with the Ameli app specifically?

Yes. The overlay floats on top of any app on your iPhone, including Ameli, CAF, impots.gouv, Leboncoin, and every other French-only app. It reads text via OCR regardless of how the app renders it.

I already speak intermediate French. Is this useful?

Very. Conversational French and administrative French are practically different languages. You might order dinner and discuss politics just fine, but “your request has been suspended pending receipt of your attestation de domicile less than three months old” is a different challenge entirely.

How is this different from Chrome’s translate?

Many French services push you toward native apps that don’t have browser translation. The Ameli app, CAF app, and Leboncoin app are separate from their websites. The overlay works on native apps where browser translation isn’t available.

What about privacy?

OCR runs on your device. The text gets sent to a translation API (same as any translation app). We don’t store your screen content. For sensitive sessions — impots, banking — you can start and stop the overlay as needed.

Does it work offline?

Text recognition works on-device. Translation requires an internet connection.

French bureaucracy is a rite of passage. Every expat has their war story — the CAF application that took four months, the prefecture appointment that got canceled with no explanation, the Ameli notification that turned out to be nothing but looked terrifying. You’ll get through it. Everyone does.

But you don’t have to fight your phone at the same time.

PiP Screen Translate is on the App Store. Free trial, no account needed.

How to Translate French Apps on iPhone (Expat Guide)