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Growth6 Jun 2026·6 min read

App Localisation Is Not Translation

Currency, dates, layout direction, payment methods and the store listing work that actually drives installs.

By Noventra Engineering

Running your strings through a translation service and shipping is the version of localisation that produces a 2% install lift and a lot of confused one-star reviews.

What breaks first

  • German text overflowing buttons designed around English
  • Dates rendered month-first in countries that read day-first
  • Prices converted but not re-anchored — $9.99 becomes an odd local number
  • Right-to-left layouts where icons and progress bars point the wrong way
  • Phone and address fields that reject valid local formats

Payment methods decide revenue

In several of our largest markets, card penetration is low and the dominant payment method is something a default Stripe integration does not offer. Adding the local method has repeatedly done more for revenue than any amount of interface translation.

Localise the listing hardest

Store listing text and screenshots are what decide whether someone installs at all. Localised screenshots with translated in-app text typically outperform translated descriptions with English screenshots by a wide margin — and cost far less than localising the whole product.

Sequence it

Listing first, then pricing and payment, then the interface, then content. Each step is cheap to test and tells you whether the next one is worth doing.

Want this applied to your product?

We do this work for clients every week. Bring us the specifics and we will tell you what we would change first.

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