Amazon is now automatically translating the text inside your product images into the shopper’s preferred language across 14 stores. It announced this on the official News_Amazon Seller Forums account on 4 August 2026, it applies to sellers of non-media products by default, and there was no opt-in step. Your main image is not translated; secondary images that contain text are. You can override the result — but the only override Amazon documents is replacement, not a switch. Everything below is sourced from the official announcement, data checked 2026-08-13.
What Changed, and When
The announcement is titled “Reach more customers with automatically translated product images” and was posted by Amazon’s official News_Amazon forum account. The post’s embedded machine-readable timestamp is 2026-08-04T10:38:56Z, which is the date this guide treats as authoritative — relative labels like “a week ago” on the forum page will drift as you read it.
The core sentence, quoted verbatim from that post:
Your product images with text will now be automatically translated into your customers’ preferred language across the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Ireland, Sweden and UK stores.
Three operational facts come from the same post, again verbatim: “Translated images will be visible on the Product Detail Page and in Image Manager. These translations use AI with quality guardrails before publishing. This applies to all sellers with non-media products in these stores. Your main image won’t be translated.”
Note what is not in that text. There is no enrollment step, no notification commitment, and no stated cutover schedule per store. If you sell in any of the 14 stores and your secondary images carry text, the default state is that translation is on. Source: Amazon Seller Forums, News_Amazon, 2026-08-04.
Which Marketplaces Are Affected
Fourteen stores are named. Grouping them makes the pattern easier to act on:
| Region | Stores named in the announcement |
|---|---|
| North America | US, Canada, Mexico |
| South America | Brazil |
| EU | Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Ireland, Sweden |
| UK | UK |
Japan, Australia, India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Turkey, Egypt and South Africa are not named in the 2026-08-04 announcement. That is an absence of mention, not a documented exclusion — Amazon does not say those stores will never be included, so treat a non-listed store as “not announced yet” rather than “safe forever.”
Two Different Things Amazon Is Doing
This is the part most summaries flatten into one bullet, and it matters because the two behaviours have different blast radii. Verbatim from the announcement:
If your images aren’t in the customer’s language (for example, not in German in the Germany store), we identify and replace them with translated versions. In the US, Canada, Germany, Spain and Belgium, we create translated versions for customers’ language preferences (such as Spanish for the US or French in Canada). Your original image in the store’s primary language won’t change.
So there are two mechanisms:
Replacement (all 14 stores). If your image isn’t in the store’s language — an English infographic sitting on Amazon.de — Amazon identifies it and replaces it with a translated version. The shopper sees Amazon’s German render instead of your English original.
Additional language versions (US, Canada, Germany, Spain, Belgium only). In these five stores, Amazon generates extra versions for shoppers whose language preference differs from the store’s primary language — Spanish for a US shopper, French for a Canadian shopper. Your original image in the store’s primary language is explicitly stated to be unchanged.
The practical read: sellers in the five-store group have a wider surface area, because a listing that looks completely correct in the store’s primary language can still be serving a machine-translated variant to a slice of shoppers you never see when you check the page yourself.
What This Changes for Your Listing
Amazon states that “Your brand elements, product specifications and visual quality are preserved during translation.” That is the intended behaviour, not a guarantee you can verify without looking. Four categories of text on your images deserve a review pass:
Brand names and product names. Names that are also ordinary words are the classic failure mode — a brand called “Summit” or a line called “Original” is a translatable noun to a machine. Amazon says brand elements are preserved; confirm it on your own catalogue rather than assuming it.
Specifications and units. Dimensions, capacities, wattages and material names embedded in a comparison chart. A mistranslated material or a decimal-comma convention shift is a returns driver, and it is the sort of error that no keyword report will ever surface to you.
Regulatory and safety text. This is the highest-stakes category, because nine of the fourteen stores are EU markets where product-safety labelling has its own legal requirements. If your images carry safety warnings, importer details or compliance markings, a machine rendering of that text is now the version some shoppers read. Our guide to Amazon GPSR compliance covers what has to be present and accurate in EU listings.
Text that is the product. Print-on-demand shirts, posters, wall art, stickers, mugs, and any customised item whose selling point is the wording printed on it. If the design says “Est. 1985” and the translated version renders that phrase into Polish, the image no longer represents the physical item the buyer will receive. The announcement scopes the feature to “non-media products,” which is precisely the bucket these items sit in. Amazon does not enumerate which categories count as “media” in this post, so treat the boundary as unconfirmed for anything borderline and verify against your own listings.
Can You Override It?
This is the question worth being precise about, because “you can’t turn it off” and “you can’t change it” are two different claims and only one of them is supported.
What Amazon documents, verbatim:
If you want to replace a translated image, upload your own images in the correct language. This automatically removes our translated versions from the Product Detail Page.
So the answer is: yes, you can override the output — by replacing it. Upload your own image in the target language and Amazon’s translated version is removed from the detail page automatically. For any image where the wording is load-bearing — regulated text, a print-on-demand design, a brand lockup — supplying your own language-correct file is the documented, supported control, and it is the one to use.
What Amazon does not document: the 2026-08-04 announcement contains no setting, toggle, or account-level preference to disable automatic image translation while leaving your existing images in place. There is no sentence in it describing an opt-out.
We are stating that as a limit of the announcement, not as a proven absence. The post links to a Seller Central help page titled “Image localisation” (/gp/help/GEFDPQ9ELJV28ASN), and that page is behind a Seller Central login — it renders as an empty JavaScript shell to logged-out visitors, on both the US and UK domains, and it is not in public search or web archives as of 2026-08-13. We could not read it, so we do not claim to know whether it describes a toggle that the announcement omits.
The accurate summary, then: there is a documented override (replace the image), there is no documented off switch, and the linked help page is the place to check for one if you have Seller Central access. Anyone telling you flatly that the feature “cannot be disabled” is asserting more than the public record supports.
How to Audit Your Own Listings
You can do all of this from the public detail page — no Seller Central access is needed for the first three steps.
- List your at-risk ASINs first. You only care about listings whose secondary images contain text: infographics, comparison charts, packaging call-outs, size guides, dimension diagrams, and anything print-on-demand. Products photographed on plain backgrounds with no overlay text have nothing to translate.
- Pull down what is actually live. Compare Amazon’s current image set against the files you uploaded. If you need the live set in bulk rather than clicking through each ASIN, see how to download Amazon product images in bulk — a diff against your source files is the fastest way to spot a substituted render.
- Check each store separately, then check each language. Open the same ASIN on each marketplace where you sell. For the five stores that generate extra language versions — US, Canada, Germany, Spain, Belgium — also switch the site’s language preference (the language selector in the Amazon site header) and reload the detail page, because that is the only way to see the variant a differently-languaged shopper is served. Checking amazon.com in English alone will not reveal a Spanish render.
- Read the text, not the layout. You are looking for mistranslated units, brand names turned into common nouns, altered safety wording, and text overflowing its box after a language change — German and Polish strings run substantially longer than English ones, so a caption that fitted its badge in English may now be clipped.
- Cross-check Image Manager. Amazon states translated images are visible in Image Manager as well as on the detail page, so sellers with account access can review the generated set there.
- Replace what matters, in the target language. For every image where the wording carries legal, brand or product meaning, upload your own correct-language file. That is the documented mechanism for removing Amazon’s version.
Common Mistakes
Checking only your home marketplace. The feature is per-store and, in five stores, per-shopper-language. A clean US listing tells you nothing about your German detail page.
Assuming the main image is at risk. It is not — Amazon states plainly that the main image won’t be translated. Effort spent re-uploading main images is wasted; put it into secondary images instead.
Treating “brand elements are preserved” as verified. It is Amazon’s description of intended behaviour. It is a reasonable starting assumption and a bad substitute for looking at your own listings.
Uploading a replacement in the wrong language. The override works by supplying the image in the correct language for that store or audience. Re-uploading your English original into the German store simply re-triggers the condition that produces a translated version.
Forgetting text-bearing product categories. Sellers of print-on-demand and customised goods are the group most exposed here and the least likely to think of themselves as having “infographic” images at all.
Letting translated copy drift from your listing copy. If your images now say something in German that your bullets say differently, you have an internal inconsistency to resolve — worth a pass alongside your listing optimization work, and a reminder that image text and HTML product descriptions are read together by shoppers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which marketplaces does Amazon’s automatic image translation cover?
Fourteen stores, named in Amazon’s 2026-08-04 announcement: US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Ireland, Sweden and the UK.
Can I turn off automatic image translation?
Amazon’s announcement documents no off switch. It documents an override: upload your own image in the correct language and Amazon’s translated version is automatically removed from the detail page. The linked “Image localisation” help page is login-gated and could not be reviewed for this guide as of 2026-08-13, so we make no claim about settings it may describe.
Will my main product image be translated?
No. The announcement states: “Your main image won’t be translated.” The feature applies to other images that contain text.
Did Amazon notify sellers before switching this on?
The announcement is the public notice, posted 2026-08-04 by the official News_Amazon Seller Forums account. It describes no enrollment step and no per-seller opt-in.
Does this apply to every product category?
The announcement scopes it to “all sellers with non-media products” in the named stores. It does not define which categories count as media, so the boundary is unconfirmed for borderline products — verify against your own listings rather than assuming an exclusion.
How do I see the translated version a shopper sees?
Open the detail page on the relevant marketplace and, in the five stores that generate extra language versions (US, Canada, Germany, Spain, Belgium), switch the site’s language preference before reloading. Sellers with account access can also review the generated set in Image Manager.
Conclusion
The change is real, it is on by default, and the date to anchor to is 2026-08-04. The practical takeaways are narrow: your main image is untouched, your text-bearing secondary images are in scope across 14 stores, and five of those stores additionally generate language variants that you will never see by checking the page in its default language. The override is documented and it is replacement-based — upload your own correct-language image and Amazon’s render is removed. An off switch is not documented in the announcement, and the help page that might address one is login-gated, so treat any confident claim in either direction with suspicion.
If your images carry regulated text or the wording is the product, audit those ASINs first. For related image-side requirements, see our guide to Amazon’s AI image metadata rules and the 75-character title limit, both of which govern how your listing renders across the same international stores.
All facts in this guide are sourced from Amazon’s official Seller Forums announcement of 2026-08-04. Data checked 2026-08-13.