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I have HTC Desire with Norwegian language set up. In Google play, all program descriptions are translated to Norwegian. I find this quite annoying because most of the translations are bad, and looks quite silly in Norwegian. Sometimes I need to imagine what it would be in English to understand what it say!

Is it possible to force the Google Play app to display all texts in original language?

EDIT:
I have realized that the issue is different for different apps.

Examples:

  1. AppLock by DoMobile Lab. This one is the description shown as badly translated to Norwegian in Google Play on my phone. When I go to Google Play in a browser on my PC, it shows description in English (My PC has English system language, and I have set up Google settings to use English).

  2. MindFeud by MonkeyBin Studios. This is shown with English description in Google Play on my phone, but it has a button next to the description header you can click on to translate (which is a function in Google Play, probably using Google Translate). This is exactly how I want it to be.

  3. TvGuiden by MeeTV AS. This is a Norwegian app, and of course has good Norwegian description in Google Play on my phone. This is also fine with me, since it is a proper translation. When I go to Google Play in a browser on my PC, it shows description in English, which is evidence that it provides description both in English and Norwegian. In this case it's most likely written in Norwegian and additionally translated to English.

In example 1, I suspect the app vendor have translated using automatic tool and reports to Google Play having a translation for that language.

In example 2, the app vendor does not claim to have a translation to Norwegian, so in this case, it is shown in Google Play in English, with a button that the user can choose to get it translated.

Example 3 has a truly proper Norwegian translation done by humans, so the app vendor reports correctly to have a translation for Norwegian. It would be interesting to get experience from others on this app if it will be shown in English for users that has phone language set to other than Norwegian (example Hungarian).

Is this the result of some app vendors (ref. example 1) misunderstand how the translation system in Google Play is supposed to work?

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  • You could try to login to your Google Account Page with your web browser, and set the language there to e.g. "English". Not sure if that is persistent, or if the app respects this (which is why I didn't post it as answer) -- but it's worth a try. There's obviously no way to tell the playstore to use the "original language" -- rather it's a decision the developer makes (to have his description auto-translated).
    – Izzy
    Commented Aug 1, 2012 at 12:56
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    This is a very irresponsible decision on Google's part. Bad translation on a grand scale like this is an insult to the language and the culture. It is appalling to see a drawing app called "draw!" being translated to "lottery!" in Chinese store (and I'm sure in other stores too). At least in the US bad Engrish signs are limited to small ethnic shops. This is as bad as walking into Walmart and finding every product's label being machine translated by the importer.
    – ytk
    Commented Feb 1, 2014 at 17:39
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    @ytk: I'm not sure it's Google that does this translation. I suspect it is the app vendor that use some translation tool to translate the text before publishing on Google. The reason I think this is that there are some apps that is shown in English text with a button in the Google Play you can press to translate. This means that Google Play does not translate automatically without you asking for it. See my 3 examples for different approaches that the app vendors have chosen.
    – awe
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 8:22
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    When authors publish their apps to the store they have an option to auto translate their product details, hence there are so many badly translated app description causing eyesore. Understandably an app developer would enable the option hoping their app would reach a wider audience. Hence I said Google is irresponsible for allowing it to be over(mis)used.
    – ytk
    Commented Feb 3, 2014 at 11:35
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    With the latest Google Play update, now every app is being auto-translated to my language. This is just disgusting. Yes, Google Translate sucks monkey balls. Machine translation just doesn't work at all. It might work for English->Spanish, but other non-latin languages? No. The translation isn't even close to the original meaning.
    – Derek 朕會功夫
    Commented Sep 15, 2014 at 1:44

2 Answers 2

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Three methods available, depending from where are you accessing Google:

  1. Google Play app usually uses the language defined on your device settings:

    1. Tap your device "home";
    2. Tap "settings";
    3. Locate "Language & keyboard" and tap;
    4. Under "Select language" you can define the language for your device that is also used by the Google Play App as to present you the information on your language.

  2. Accessing from a browser: The Google Play Store sets the language by your IP address, you can update that definition by changing it at the footer (it will persist):

    Google Play Store Footer

  3. For all Google Products: From Gmail, you can access your account settings and set the language that you prefer for Google Products:

    1. Login to your Gmail account;
    2. On the top right corner, click "account";
    3. On the left vertical menu, click "language".

    Google Account Settings

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    I do not want to set the phone language to english, because I like that the phone interface is norwegian, but the other two options seems to have fixed it regarding the app content for the various apps in Play Store (the texts for the static parts in the Play Store app itself is still Norwegian, but that's how I like it anyway. That's translated properly...)
    – awe
    Commented Aug 9, 2012 at 11:48
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    I'd answer this as a separate answer, but question is protected and apparently earning reputation on other sites doesn't count. Anyway, to avoid google translating play store in browser you can also change hl=pl (for polish) to hl=en
    – Marcin Raczkowski
    Commented Jan 30, 2014 at 2:43
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This also annoyed me. My language is Hungarian, a hard-to-translate language. For example Google translated the "loop-device" to Hungarian as "rotating-device", which is a different thing. I think it is a really bad idea. The app, which does not have the user's native language built-in and the user doesn't speak any language of that app, then that user will not be able to understand and use that app normally. Also 9 of 10 translations aren't understandable.

So after that beginning I solved my problem. I installed Xposed and that appinfo module. Than I changed the language setting in the appinfo for Google Play. Lastly I cleared the cache of Google Play. And voilà! All in English and I can understand everything!

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