How to translate your App Store description

What the description does (and doesn’t) do

On Apple’s App Store, the description is not indexed for search — your keywords field, app name and subtitle handle ranking. The description’s job is conversion: a user who arrived from search or a link is deciding whether to tap “Get”. An English description shown to a Japanese user answers that question for them — no.

That division of labor is good news for translation: you’re optimizing for persuasion, not keyword density, so the localized text can be genuinely natural.

The first three lines carry everything

On the product page, only the first ~3 lines are visible before the “more” link — roughly 160–255 characters depending on device. Most users never tap “more”. So the opening must state the core benefit, and this is where literal translation fails hardest: a punchy English opener often turns flabby when translated, because languages like German or French run 15–25% longer, pushing your hook below the fold.

The fix is to translate the message, not the sentence: give the translator (human or AI) the constraint “the first sentence must state X and fit in one line” rather than the English text alone. This is exactly the kind of instruction StoreTranslate passes to the model along with each field’s character limit.

Adapt, don’t transliterate

• Idioms and wordplay — replace them with a local equivalent or plain language. “Hit the ground running” means nothing in Korean.
• Social proof — “Featured in TechCrunch” impresses in the U.S.; in Japan, an App Store feature or local press mention converts better. Swap references where you have them.
• Formality — German “Sie” vs “du”, French “vous”, Japanese polite form: the register you pick is a brand decision. Set it once as a translation instruction so all fields agree.
• Units, currency, examples — miles become kilometers, dollars become the local currency, and example names in screenshots and copy should match the market.
• Brand and feature names — decide which stay in English. A glossary of do-not-translate terms prevents the model (or an agency) from “helpfully” localizing your product name.

Structure that survives translation

Descriptions built as short paragraphs plus a delimited feature list translate cleanly — each bullet is a self-contained claim the translator can’t tangle. Walls of prose don’t. Before localizing, restructure your English source: hook (1–2 lines), what it does (one short paragraph), feature list (5–8 bullets), social proof, closing call to action. Then every one of the 50 translations inherits that scannable shape.

Doing all 50 locales at once

Manually, this is the workflow that kills localization projects: paste the description into a translator 50 times, check each against 4,000 characters, then paste each into App Store Connect field by field. StoreTranslate replaces it with one job — the AI translates the description (and any other fields you select) for every target language with your instructions and limits applied, then writes the results to your version via the App Store Connect API. See the full workflow in the App Store localization guide.