Why localization matters more than most indie devs realise
65% of Google Play downloads come from outside the United States. If your app listing exists only in English, you are invisible in the majority of the world's app market.
The good news: Google Play lets you localise your listing into 77 languages for free. The barrier isn't cost — it's time and workflow. This guide covers every option from fully manual to AI-assisted, so you can pick the one that fits your app and your schedule.
Option 1: Use Google's built-in auto-translate (free, fast, low quality)
Google Play Console has a built-in auto-translate button on the Store listing page. Click it and Google Translate fills in all your localised listings automatically.
Pros: Instant, free, covers all 77 Play Store languages at once.
Cons: The output reads like machine translation — stilted, literal, and often wrong in context. Marketing copy that works in English ("effortless habit building") often becomes awkward or meaningless when literally translated.
This is a reasonable starting point to get coverage, but it will not help your conversion rate in those markets.
Best for: Apps with very small user bases in non-English markets where even basic coverage is better than nothing.
Option 2: Translate manually using DeepL or ChatGPT (free, better quality)
For the languages that matter most to your app — typically German, French, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish — manually translating your short description and first 150 characters of your long description will have the biggest impact.
Workflow:
- Identify your top 5 non-English markets from Play Console → Statistics → Countries
- Copy your English short description (80 chars) into DeepL (free tier available)
- Review and adjust the output — DeepL is significantly better than Google Translate for marketing language
- For Japanese and Korean specifically, use ChatGPT with a prompt like: "Translate this app store description into natural Japanese. It's a marketing text for a productivity app. Keep it under 80 characters."
- Paste each translated short description into the corresponding locale in Play Console
Time cost: About 20–30 minutes per language for just the short description and title.
Option 3: AI-assisted translation tools (low cost, store-optimised output)
Tools like Apporb connect directly to your Play Console and translate your full listing — title, short description, and long description — into 28+ locales with AI that's trained on store copy, not generic text. The output is marketing-appropriate language rather than literal translation.
Pros: One click, all fields, all locales, store-aware copy. Cons: Requires a tool subscription (free plan available).
Which languages to prioritise first
If you can only localise into 3–5 languages, these consistently deliver the highest return for English-language apps:
- German (de) — high App Store spend, users expect German listings
- Japanese (ja) — very high revenue per user, but quality matters — poor Japanese copy is immediately noticed
- Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR) — large market, low competition from other indie developers
- Spanish (es / es-419) — covers Spain and Latin America
- French (fr) — France, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland
The most common mistake: translating only the short description
Most developers who do bother with localization only translate the short description and leave the long description in English. Google Play will still rank the app for the localised locale, but conversion will be low because users reading in German will see an English description and bounce.
Translate the full description for your top 3–5 markets. For the rest, even Google's auto-translate is better than English-only.
Keeping translations updated
Every time you update your English listing, you need to update your localised listings too. This is where the ongoing cost of manual translation adds up — $50–200 per update for a professional translator, or 2–3 hours of manual work per update.
If you update your listing more than once a quarter, automating this step starts to pay for itself quickly.
Apporb translates your full Google Play and App Store listing to 28+ locales in one click — free plan available at apporb.com.