The honest answer first: translation swaps the words; localisation rebuilds the argument for the market. “Just translate it” fails because it moves your sentences into another language while leaving them built for the wrong buyer — so they’re understood, and they don’t persuade.
I’m Mark Chambers, a British–Italian marketing consultant, native in both languages. I spend a lot of my time undoing translated marketing in both directions. Here’s the difference that costs exporters money.
Translation moves words. Localisation moves the argument.
Translation answers “what do these words mean in the other language?” Localisation answers “what would make this buyer, in this country, choose us?” Those are different questions, and only the second one sells.
The three things translation quietly misses
- Register and trust. What reads as confident in Italian can read as pushy in British English, and vice versa. The trust signals — guarantees, reviews, the names you drop — differ by market.
- The argument. The order you make your case, the objection you answer first, the proof you lead with — a British buyer and an Italian buyer want them in a different order.
- Search intent. People don’t search the translation of your keyword. They search how they’d actually ask — in their language, now increasingly to an AI. Translate the page and you vanish from the search that matters.
What it looks like done right
Going into the UK, it means native British English, British proof, British conventions — the full version is in how to market an Italian brand in the UK. Going into Italy, it means sounding genuinely Italian, not grammatically Italian — see how to enter the Italian market. Same brand; two arguments; one of them rebuilt, not mirrored.
This is why I don’t offer “translation” as a service. I offer the thing underneath it: the brand, the site and the search presence, rebuilt natively in each language. It’s part of my core work.
If your foreign-language presence was translated rather than localised, I’ll tell you honestly where it’s costing you — that’s the Corridor Audit.
Or message me, in English or Italian.