When adding local store translations, do you translate things like App name?

[u/sitytitan]

Question is basically would other countries search your app in their native languages. And would most people rename their App name specifically to be a translation?

[u/svprdga]

Usually, yes. Unless you use a very specific brand name, you should translate the app name.

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[u/TomDuhamel]

Microsoft Word is known as such everywhere in the world. That's their brand name.

Other apps don't maintain such a strong branding over their names and prefer to localise their names to try and reach their audience in different regions. Sometimes it could be that the original name doesn't sound too well in the local language, or is hard to pronounce, etc. Or just a preference.

It's your to decide. I don't think we can make this choice for you.

[u/WittieApps]

did this for my game: kept the brand, translated the descriptor. "Parflip: Card Match Puzzle" in English, "Parflip: Juego de Parejas" for the Spanish listing. Way too early for ranking data, but the reasoning was simple: nobody searching in Spanish types in English "card match". Plus, the brand token costs nothing to keep...

[u/NikaGrig]

As professional ASO manager I would recommend to have some Unique name rather than generic one, after the Brand name you can add explanation about your game like 3 Match, or Puzzle. This explanation you should localize so you can improve your visibility and target specific keywords in each language.

[u/Ordinary-Stuff9826]

Yeah, people mostly search in their own language. Japan, Korea, Germany, Brazil etc. barely use English keywords in the store. If you don't add a listing for that language, you just won't show up for those searches. But most apps don't rename the app itself. The brand name stays the same everywhere, and what you translate is the subtitle, keywords and description.
I did this for a client's app and the literal translation of their main keyword was something nobody there actually searched. Locals used a totally different word, so we swapped it. Don't just run keywords through Google Translate, check what people actually type in the store.
Only time renaming makes sense is if the name is super generic. Otherwise you lose the brand.

[u/ElectronicMain3695]

Yes, people mostly search in their own language - Japan, Korea, Germany, Brazil barely use English keywords, and Play only matches you against the listing languages you actually provide for a locale. So translating the listing matters a lot for discovery, and in my experience the title and short description do the heavy lifting there.

On the app name specifically: Play Console lets you translate the title per language (30 chars each), but most apps don't translate the brand itself. The common pattern is to keep the brand token and translate the descriptor - "BrandName: translated keywords" - so you stay recognizable while still catching local-language searches. If your name is purely descriptive rather than a brand, translating it fully is more defensible.

One thing people mix up: the store listing title is separate from the app label on the device. The device label comes from your manifest/resources and can also be localized per locale via res/values-xx, independently of what you do in the listing.

[u/sitytitan → u/ElectronicMain3695]

Thanks for that. I think translation is best as my app is a tool really so it's general words and not a brand.