Comment 4 for bug 1763471

So the info in the appdata file is passed to DEP-11, Ubuntu Software fetches already localized strings from the latter, and there is a time factor. Did I get that (approximately) right?

That would explain why all my efforts to make Ubuntu Software show something different when running under a Swedish locale failed. The summary is shown in Swedish for me too, but the name and description are in English. That does not change whatever I do to manipulate software-properties.mo and/or /usr/share/metainfo/software-properties-gtk.appdata.xml. (I even edited the English description, and that didn't make a difference either.)

But if that is how it works, is it at all possible to apply translations from .mo files at runtime?

What you want to achieve sounds highly desirable to me. But it would be nice if we could confirm somehow that it will work without inline translations before we let dh_translations strip them.