I Translated My App Into 6 Languages Before Launch. Here's What the Data Says.

#i18n #buildinpublic #android #productivity

Everyone told me I was crazy.

"You haven't even launched in France yet, and you're translating into German?"

I did it anyway. Here's what happened.

The Decision

TAMSIV is a voice-powered AI task manager I've been building solo for 6 months (730+ commits). When I hit the i18n milestone, I had a choice: launch in French first and "see how it goes," or go all-in on 6 languages from day one.

I chose the second option. I wrote an AI translation script that processes 1,993 keys across 5 target languages (English, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese) using OpenRouter. I localized the Play Store listing. The website. Even the voice assistant understands context in multiple languages.

Total investment: about 2 days of work.

The Data (41 days of tracking)

Here's what tamsiv.com analytics show after 41 days:

2,206 unique visitors total
1,142 unique visitors in the last 7 days alone

But the number that stopped me:

60% of visitors don't speak French.

Language breakdown (last 7 days)

Language	% of traffic	Unique visitors
🇫🇷 French	40%	440
🇬🇧 English	20%	226
🇩🇪 German	13%	150
🇪🇸 Spanish	10%	118
🇮🇹 Italian	9%	113
🇵🇹 Portuguese	8%	98

Germany is the third largest market. I never wrote a single German social media post. Zero German marketing. These visitors found TAMSIV through:

Localized Play Store listings — each language has its own title, description, and screenshots
Google searches in their language — the website auto-detects and serves the right locale
Automatic language routing — tamsiv.com detects browser language and redirects

The Technical Setup

Translation script

I use OpenRouter with a configurable model to translate JSON key files:

// Pseudo-code of the translation pipeline
for (const locale of ['en', 'de', 'es', 'it', 'pt']) {
  const translated = await openrouter.chat({
    model: process.env.OPENROUTER_MODEL,
    messages: [{
      role: 'system',
      content: `Translate to ${locale}. Keep placeholders like {name} intact. Adapt idioms naturally.`
    }, {
      role: 'user', 
      content: JSON.stringify(frenchKeys)
    }]
  });
  writeFile(`locales/${locale}.json`, translated);
}

Key decisions:

French as source language (not English) — my native language, so the source is always natural
AI translation with human review — I review German/Spanish/Italian with native speakers when possible
9 passes per language — the script runs multiple passes to catch context-dependent translations
Placeholder preservation — {taskCount} tâches must become {taskCount} tasks, not {taskCount} Aufgaben tasks

Play Store localization

The Play Store supports per-language metadata. I localized:

App title (30 chars)
Short description (80 chars)
Full description (4000 chars)
Release notes

This is probably the highest-ROI i18n work. People search the Play Store in their language. If your listing isn't localized, you're invisible.

Website (Next.js + next-intl)

/fr/  → French (default)
/en/  → English
/de/  → German
/es/  → Spanish
/it/  → Italian
/pt/  → Portuguese

Each locale has its own translated slugs, meta descriptions, and Open Graph tags. The x-default hreflang points to /fr/ (primary market).

The Surprising Insight

The most visited non-homepage pages are:

/fr/politique-de-confidentialite (165 visits)
/fr/suppression-compte (92 visits)

These are Play Store required pages (privacy policy, account deletion). Their high traffic confirms that people are finding TAMSIV through the Play Store, clicking these links, and landing on the website. The Play Store localization is driving real traffic.

Another Data Point

12 people clicked "Download for iOS." The app is Android-only.

12 strangers, somewhere in the world, want TAMSIV on iPhone. That's not a metric — that's a roadmap.

The Lesson

i18n is not polish you add after launch. It's an acquisition channel.

Every language is a door. I spent 2 days opening 5 extra doors, and 60% of my traffic walks through them.

If you're building a side project and thinking "I'll translate later" — consider translating now. The Play Store alone makes it worth it. And with AI translation tools, the cost is nearly zero.