Localize Your App Store Listing Without Translating the App

The listing is what people read before they download, and the app is what they use afterward. Localizing only the first part can help people find and understand you in their language. It cannot make an English interface easier to use. Plan for both: the page earns the install, the product decides whether the user stays and rates you.

Apple's product page guidance asks you to localize the description, keywords, app previews and screenshots for each market where you offer the app, and says you can translate the name and tailor keywords to each market's values. Nothing there requires the binary to be translated first.

1. Check what your app really supports. List the interface languages you ship today. This is the honest baseline for every claim you make.
2. Choose listing languages by demand. Pick the storefronts where you already have some downloads or where keyword research shows room. The guide on how many localizations you need helps with the count.
3. Write each field for the reader, not for translation. Name, subtitle, keywords, description, promotional text and What's New can all be localized. The keywords need their own research in that language.
4. Say what language the app uses. Add one plain sentence near the top of the description, for example that the interface is currently in English. Apple does not require it; it sets expectations.
5. Decide what to do with screenshots. A new language starts with the primary language's screenshots and properties, except description and keywords. If the interface is English, screenshots with English UI are accurate. Put the translated message in the caption and keep the UI honest. See localizing screenshots.
6. Prepare support. The support URL can be localized. Make sure someone can answer in the language you advertise, or say which languages support covers.
7. Measure, then decide on translating the app. Watch downloads, ratings and review text in each country. If people download but review the English interface, that is your signal to translate the binary.

A hypothetical habit tracker, Streakly, has an English-only interface. It adds a German listing. Fields that change: name, subtitle, keywords, description, promotional text and What's New. Fields that stay: the in-app text, the in-app purchase screens and the English UI inside screenshots.

The German description starts: "Streakly hilft dir, Gewohnheiten aufzubauen. Die App ist derzeit auf Englisch." Both sentences are in the first lines, which Apple notes users read before tapping to read more. The German keyword field is written from German research and has to fit 100 bytes, where each umlaut takes two bytes; see the bytes answer.

• Rank in the home country. A new localization is a separate set of fields, so keep your primary language's keywords intact while you add others.
• Languages can be managed only while the app status is editable. Do this when you have a version in progress.
• If no localization matches a user's language, the next most relevant localization is used, so a missing language is never blank.
• Honesty. Do not promise languages, features or content the app lacks. Apple's Guideline 2.3.3 asks screenshots to show the app in use, so screenshots with an English interface are the accurate choice.

Once the German page converts but the English interface draws complaints, the binary is the next investment. Until then, compare what each language costs with the App Store localization guide, and see how LocalASO writes local keywords without translating word for word.