Should My App Support Multiple Languages for Accessibility?

You've just launched your app and someone leaves a review saying they cant use it because its only in English. Or maybe you're planning your build right now and wondering if you need to support Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic... the list goes on and you're already feeling overwhelmed by the scope of it all. I've been there more times than I care to count—sitting with clients who are torn between wanting their app to reach everyone and the reality of what multilingual support actually costs in terms of time, money, and ongoing maintenance.

The question of whether your app needs multiple languages isn't actually about accessibility in the way most people think. Sure, language support can make your app more inclusive, but its really about understanding who your users are and where they are. I've built apps for healthcare providers that served immigrant communities where multilingual support wasnt just nice to have—it was legally required and genuinely life-saving. But I've also worked with startups who spent tens of thousands translating their app into six languages before they'd even validated their core market, which... well, lets just say that money could have been better spent elsewhere.

The biggest mistake I see is treating translation as an afterthought when the app is already built—retrofitting language support into an existing codebase is roughly three times more expensive than planning for it from day one

What makes this decision tricky is that theres no one-size-fits-all answer. An e-commerce app selling globally needs different language support than a local services app, even if both have international users. The technical implementation varies wildly too; you might need right-to-left text support for Arabic, different date formats for various regions, or culturally appropriate imagery that changes based on the user's language. Its a bit mad really how complex it gets once you start digging into the details.

Understanding What Multilingual Support Really Means

When most people think about multilingual support they picture translating some button labels and menu items—but its actually far more complex than that. I've worked on apps where clients assumed we could just run everything through Google Translate and call it done. Spoiler alert: that approach fails spectacularly every single time and often creates more problems than it solves.

Real multilingual support means adapting your entire app experience to work naturally for users who speak different languages. This includes obvious things like translating all your text content, error messages, and help documentation. But it also means handling right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew (which completely changes your UI layout), supporting different date and time formats, currency symbols, number formatting, and even adjusting content length because German text can be 30% longer than English for the same phrase.

What Actually Needs Translation

I built an e-commerce app a few years back where we initially translated just the main screens—checkout, product pages, that sort of thing. We missed the push notifications, email receipts, and customer service messages. Users would browse in Spanish but then get support emails in English, which completely broke the experience and our support tickets went through the roof.

Here's what genuinely needs localising in most apps:

• All visible text (buttons, labels, headers, body content)
• Push notifications and in-app messages
• Error messages and validation text
• Email templates and automated communications
• Privacy policies and terms of service
• App store listings and screenshots
• Tutorial content and onboarding flows
• Customer support responses

Beyond Just Words

The trickiest part? Cultural adaptation. I worked on a healthcare app where we translated everything perfectly into Japanese, but the entire mental model of how patients interact with doctors was different. The direct communication style we used in English felt rude in Japanese. We had to restructure entire user flows—not just change the words. That's when I learned translation and localisation are two completely different beasts, and proper multilingual support means considering both.

Who Actually Benefits from Language Options in Apps

The obvious answer is "users who speak different languages"—but that's not the full picture. I've built apps serving immigrant communities where language support wasn't just nice to have, it was the entire reason the app existed in the first place. One healthcare app we developed for a NHS trust saw 73% of its users switch from English to their preferred language within the first session. These weren't people who couldn't speak English at all; many were perfectly capable but felt more comfortable reading medical information in their native language. Health information is stressful enough without the added cognitive load of processing it in your second or third language.

But here's something that surprised me over the years—elderly users benefit massively from language options even when they've lived in an English-speaking country for decades. Their first language often becomes more dominant as they age, and apps that support this see much higher engagement rates from older demographics. I've also noticed that bilingual families use language settings as a teaching tool; parents set the app to their heritage language so children can learn whilst using the app.

Different User Groups Have Different Needs

From working across various sectors, these groups benefit most from multilingual support:

• Recent immigrants and refugees accessing services
• Elderly users reverting to their first language
• International business travellers managing finances or bookings
• Students learning in their native language
• Parents teaching children their heritage language
• Users with cognitive disabilities who process information better in their strongest language

What you'll find is that language support intersects with other accessibility needs in unexpected ways. A dyslexic user might find it easier to read in a language with more consistent spelling patterns, for instance. Its not always about translation—sometimes its about cognitive comfort. Similar to how video accessibility features serve multiple user needs, language options often benefit more people than you'd initially expect.

Don't assume that users in English-speaking countries only need English. Even in the UK, over 4 million people don't have English as their first language, and many prefer using apps in their native tongue for complex tasks like financial planning or healthcare management.

The Real Cost of Adding Multiple Languages

Let's talk money, because adding language support to your app isn't just about hiring a translator and calling it a day. The first quote I typically give clients is around £800-1,200 per language for initial translation work—and that's just for the in-app text strings. If your app has 200 strings of text (buttons, labels, error messages, onboarding screens), you're looking at professional translation costs that scale quickly. I worked on a fintech app last year where we added French, German and Spanish; the translation alone came to nearly £4,000 before we'd even touched the technical implementation.

But here's the thing—translation is actually the cheap bit. The real costs come from what happens next. Your development team needs to implement proper internationalisation (we call it i18n in the industry), which means refactoring your codebase to support dynamic text that changes based on user language. For a reasonably complex app, I usually estimate 40-60 hours of developer time just for the technical setup. That's another £3,000-5,000 depending on your developer rates. And if your app wasn't built with this in mind from the start? Double that estimate.

Hidden Costs That Catch People Out

The costs that surprise clients most are the ongoing ones. Every time you update your app or add a new feature, those text strings need translating again. I've seen companies spend £200-400 per app update just keeping their translations current. One e-commerce client of mine abandoned their German version entirely because they couldn't keep up with the maintenance costs—they were launching new products weekly and the translation backlog became unmanageable.

Then there's testing. You can't just assume the translations work properly; you need native speakers to actually use the app and spot issues. Arabic and Hebrew require right-to-left layouts, which often breaks your carefully designed UI. Chinese characters take up different amounts of space than English text, so buttons that looked perfect suddenly have text spilling out. I once had a healthcare app where the Spanish translation of "save" was so long it broke the entire navigation bar on smaller iPhone screens. These design challenges are similar to the ones you face when keeping your app design modern and relevant, but they require ongoing attention with every new language you support.

What Your Budget Actually Needs to Cover

Here's a realistic breakdown of costs for adding three new languages to a medium-sized app:

• Initial professional translation: £3,000-4,000
• Development implementation: £4,000-6,000
• Design adjustments for text expansion: £1,500-2,500
• Native speaker testing: £800-1,200
• App Store listing translations: £400-600
• Ongoing maintenance (annually): £2,000-3,000

That's roughly £11,700-17,300 upfront, plus a couple thousand each year to maintain it. And this assumes everything goes smoothly—which it rarely does. The first multilingual app I built went 40% over budget because we hadn't accounted for all the UI fixes needed for longer German words. You live and learn, but its better to budget conservatively from the start. As I often tell clients when discussing feature integration costs, the technical complexity always adds more to the budget than people initially expect.

When Your App Doesn't Need Multiple Languages

I've turned down translation work more times than I can count, and it always surprises clients when I do. But here's the thing—not every app needs multiple languages, and spending thousands on localisation when you shouldn't is money you'll never get back.

If your app serves a specific local market, adding languages might actually hurt more than help. I worked on a booking app for UK tradespeople a few years back; the client was convinced they needed French and German support because "what if tourists need a plumber?" Turns out, less than 0.3% of their user base was non-English speaking, and those users typically had English-speaking contacts who'd book services for them. We saved them about £15,000 by keeping it English-only. When designing apps for specific industries, you often find that the professional terminology remains consistent across languages anyway.

The best apps solve real problems for real users, not hypothetical ones you might encounter someday

Apps with highly specialised terminology often struggle with translation too. Medical apps are a nightmare for this—I've seen translation errors in healthcare apps that completely changed clinical meanings, which is genuinely dangerous. If your content requires medical, legal, or technical precision and you don't have native speakers who understand the domain, stick with one language until you've got the budget and expertise to do it properly.

When Single-Language Makes Business Sense

Early-stage startups almost never need multiple languages straight away. You're still figuring out product-market fit in your home market, and your app's going to change constantly based on user feedback. Every time you update a feature, you'll need to retranslate content, which slows development to a crawl. I always tell founders: nail your core market first, then expand when you've got the revenue and data to justify it. Its just common sense really, but people get caught up in the idea of being "global" from day one when they haven't even proven the concept locally yet. This ties into proper pre-launch preparation—you want to validate demand in your primary market before expanding to additional languages.

Building Translation into Your App Without Breaking the Bank

The good news? You don't need a massive budget to add language support to your app. I've helped startups with tight budgets implement multilingual features that rival what Fortune 500 companies offer, and it comes down to being smart about how you approach it. The key is starting with your app's actual text content—most apps use far fewer unique strings than you'd think. I worked on an e-commerce app that seemed complex but only had around 400 unique text strings once we'd audited everything properly. That's way more manageable than people expect.

Your first move should be implementing proper internationalisation (i18n) in your codebase from the start. Both iOS and Android have built-in support for this—its not some fancy add-on you need to pay for. What this means is that instead of hardcoding "Add to Cart" in your button, you reference a string key that pulls the correct translation based on the user's language setting. Sure, it takes a bit more time upfront but I've seen projects where adding translations later cost three times as much because developers had to refactor everything. This is part of future-proofing your app against changing requirements and expanding markets.

For the actual translations, skip the expensive agency route initially. Services like Lokalise or Phrase connect you with professional translators at reasonable rates (usually £0.08-0.15 per word), and they handle all the file management which saves your developers hours of tedious work. I typically recommend starting with just one additional language—whichever market you're genuinely targeting—rather than trying to support five languages on day one. A healthcare app I worked on started with just English and Polish because 60% of their user requests came from Poland... adding that single language increased their conversion rate by 34% in that market.

Another budget-friendly approach? Community translations. If you've got engaged users who speak other languages, many will volunteer to help translate your app in exchange for early access to features or small perks. I've seen this work brilliantly for education apps where users feel invested in making the content accessible to their communities. Just make sure you have a native speaker review any community contributions because awkward translations can damage your brand more than having no translation at all. This approach can also help create social buzz around your app within specific language communities.

How Language Support Affects User Experience

I'll be honest with you—adding multiple languages to an app isn't just about translating words from English to Spanish or Mandarin. Its about completely rethinking how people interact with your interface, and I've seen apps get this spectacularly wrong more times than I care to count. The biggest issue? Text expansion. A simple "Save" button in English becomes "Enregistrer" in French or "Speichern" in German; suddenly your carefully designed button layout breaks because nobody accounted for 30-50% more text. I once worked on a healthcare app where the navigation completely fell apart in German because medical terms are notoriously long in that language—we had to redesign the entire menu system.

But here's the thing—its not just about fitting words into spaces. Different languages read in different directions (Arabic and Hebrew go right-to-left, which means your entire UI needs to flip), they have different expectations for tone and formality, and they use dates and numbers in wildly different formats. When we built a fintech app that needed to work across Europe and Asia, we discovered that currency formatting alone required 23 different variations. And don't even get me started on pluralisation rules... English has two forms (one item, two items) but Polish has five different plural forms depending on the number. Your code needs to handle all of that. These complexities are similar to the challenges you face with cross-platform development, where different systems have their own requirements and conventions.

Always test your app interface with the longest possible translations first—usually German or Finnish—to ensure your designs can accommodate text expansion without breaking. If it works in German, it'll probably work everywhere else.

The impact on loading times matters too? Each additional language adds to your app's file size, which means longer downloads and more storage space required on users devices. I typically recommend loading only the selected language on first launch, then allowing users to download additional languages if needed. This keeps the initial experience fast while still offering flexibility for multilingual users who might want to switch between languages.

Common Mistakes When Adding Multiple Languages

I've seen this mistake so many times it almost hurts to think about—clients come to us with an app that's already been "translated" by another team, and when we dig into the code its a complete mess. The most common problem? They've hardcoded text strings directly into their app views instead of using proper localisation files. This means every single piece of text is scattered across hundreds of files, making updates nearly impossible without rebuilding large chunks of the app. I worked on an e-commerce app where the previous developers had done exactly this; when the client wanted to add French support we basically had to rewrite 40% of the frontend because there was no centralised way to manage translations.

Another big one is assuming all languages work the same way as English. German words can be incredibly long—I mean really long—and if you've designed your buttons and labels with English text in mind, German translations will overflow or get cut off. Arabic and Hebrew read right-to-left, which breaks your entire layout if you haven't planned for it from the start. We built a fitness tracking app that looked perfect in English but became completely unusable in Arabic because all the navigation elements were backwards and the text alignment was wrong.

Machine Translation Without Human Review

Google Translate is great for getting the gist of something, but its terrible for app interfaces. I've seen apps where automatic translations created genuinely confusing or even offensive content because nobody checked them. Medical apps are particularly bad for this—you cannot rely on machine translation for health-related content. Period. We worked with a healthcare client who'd initially used automated translation for their symptom checker; when we brought in proper medical translators they found dozens of errors that could have led to serious misunderstandings about patient care.

Forgetting About Date and Number Formats

This one catches people out constantly. Different countries format dates differently (is it 05/03 or 03/05?), use different decimal separators (is it 1.5 or 1,5?), and display currencies in various ways. Your app needs to handle all of this automatically based on the user's locale settings, not just translate the words around the numbers.

Here are the mistakes that will cost you time and money if you're not careful:

• Not extracting strings into resource files from day one—retrofitting localisation is expensive and time-consuming
• Ignoring context when sending strings to translators; the word "book" means different things as a noun versus a verb
• Forgetting to translate error messages, push notifications, and email templates—users notice when half your app is in their language and half isn't
• Not testing with actual native speakers; your developers cant spot cultural issues or awkward phrasing
• Assuming images and icons are universal—some imagery doesn't translate well across cultures or can be offensive
• Not planning for text expansion; translations are typically 30-40% longer than English text
• Missing pluralisation rules—English has simple plural rules but languages like Russian have complex plural forms based on quantity

The fintech apps I've worked on taught me this lesson the hard way. Financial terminology is incredibly specific and varies massively between regions even when they speak the same language. British English financial terms are different from American ones, and both are different from Australian or Canadian usage. You need translators who understand both the language and the industry...otherwise you end up with technically correct translations that sound completely wrong to your users.

Testing and Maintaining Your Multilingual App

I'll be honest with you—testing multilingual apps is where most teams completely drop the ball. You can have the best translations in the world but if your Russian text gets cut off halfway through or your Arabic menu breaks the entire layout because nobody tested right-to-left languages, you've wasted your time and money. I've seen this happen more times than I care to remember, particularly with e-commerce apps where product names in German suddenly become three times longer than the English version and break the entire checkout flow.

Here's what actually needs testing beyond the obvious translation checks: text expansion (German and Finnish can be 30% longer than English), text truncation on buttons and labels, date and number formatting for each locale, currency symbols displaying correctly, and honestly the big one that catches everyone out—keyboard layouts and input methods for languages like Chinese or Arabic. On one healthcare app we built, the appointment booking system worked perfectly in English but completely failed in Thai because we hadn't tested the calendar picker with Buddhist calendar dates. Small thing? Sure. But it made the app unusable for the entire target market. This kind of thorough testing is essential for measuring real development progress rather than just assuming features work across all supported languages.

Testing isn't just about making sure the words are right; its about making sure your app actually works in every language you claim to support

Maintenance is the part nobody budgets for properly. Languages evolve, your app evolves, and those translation files need updating with every single release. I always recommend setting up a translation management system—even a simple one like a shared spreadsheet with version control—so you know exactly which strings need translating when you add new features. And please, please test on actual devices with those language settings enabled, not just screenshots your translator sends you. This ongoing maintenance is crucial for keeping your app relevant in international markets.

Conclusion

Look, theres no universal answer to whether your app needs multiple languages—it depends entirely on your users, your market, and honestly, your budget. I've built apps that launched in 27 languages from day one because the client was targeting global markets with genuine user demand in each region. I've also built apps that stayed English-only for three years and still dominated their niche because their entire user base was in English-speaking countries.

The mistake I see people make is treating multilingual support as a tick-box exercise rather than a real commitment to serving users in their native language. Half-hearted translations that nobody maintains? They're worse than having no translation at all—they make you look unprofessional and can actually hurt your credibility in those markets. And trust me, users can spot a machine-translated app from a mile away; it shows you don't actually care about their experience.

Start by looking at your actual user data (not what you hope it will be). If 5% of your users are attempting to use your app in Spanish but struggling because its English-only, that's a clear signal worth investigating. But if you're adding languages because it "seems like the right thing to do" without any data backing it up? You're probably wasting money that could go towards improving the core experience for the users you already have.

My advice after years of doing this—build your app with internationalisation in mind from the start, even if you only launch in one language. Its so much easier to add languages later when you've structured things properly. And when you do add languages, do it properly or don't do it at all. Your users will thank you for it.