What Germans say vs what Brits hear: why website localisation matter
You’ll quite often hear Schicken Sie mir die Unterlagen (“Send me the documents”) in German. But if you used the same sentence in English, you’d risk coming across as abrupt or even rude, depending on how you say it. In British English, we’d often rephrase this type of request as a question: “Could you send me the documents?”.
The difference in phrasing might seem small, but if you’re a German company trying to sell to British customers, nuances like these can have a much bigger impact than you might think. Because having your website in English doesn’t necessarily mean you have a website that feels right to British customers.
Website localisation is more than just words
The difference in languages is particularly important on your website because you’re communicating via writing with a stranger who doesn’t know you or your brand. They often don’t even realise that your brand isn’t from the same country as they are. So if something sounds slightly off, they’re probably not thinking, “Ah, this is probably just the German way of saying things”. They’re more likely to think your brand is unfriendly, strange, or difficult to deal with.
Directness isn’t the only thing that can get lost when you translate too literally.
I often see Überzeugen Sie sich, which translates literally as “convince yourself”. The problem isn’t just that “convince yourself” sounds strange in English. You’re asking your customer to do the hard work rather than presenting and selling the benefits of your product or service to them.
This isn’t how I’d expect a British brand to speak to its potential customers. Depending on what your CTA is actually trying to achieve, you’d need to rethink it completely rather than just translate the words.
These examples give you a bit of an idea why straightforward translations often leave something to be desired. You can translate every word correctly and still lose something in the process.
Using a machine to translate your website can exacerbate the situation if it hasn’t taken your brand’s entire context into account. It might give you perfectly understandable English, but that doesn't mean the copy will engage with or persuade the people you're trying to sell to.
And when you're selling across borders, that matters because your website isn't just there to help people understand your product. It's also helping them decide whether they trust your brand enough to buy from you.
It's not just about understanding
Consumers are unlikely to buy from you if they don't trust your brand. And when you're asking someone to buy from a company based in another country, that trust can be even more important. There are already extra considerations when buying from the EU as a UK customer, so if your communication doesn't meet their expectations, your brand risks not even getting out of the gate.
British consumers aren’t opposed to buying from Germany or the EU, but if buying from you involves the extra faff of having something shipped from the EU, you need to give them a reason to choose you.
Your website is one of the places where you do that.
If the copy sounds awkward, super literal, or comes across as completely AI-generated, customers will start to question the company behind it.
Should I actually buy something from this brand, and can I trust that it’ll be what they say it is? Will ordering from them be more hassle than it's worth?
Personally, I find it also comes across as a bit lazy, as though the company doesn’t really care about me as a customer.
The problem isn't just that they understand what you're saying. It's whether they trust you enough to buy from you.
Localisation can make you “you” in the UK
Localisation is the process of adapting your product, service, or content to fit a specific target language, culture, and expectations of the target local market. And it isn’t just about avoiding mistakes or losing potential customers.
Good localisation can bring your brand’s personality into another language, so you become known as “you” in the UK too.
British web copy is a really fun space, brands use language to create completely different feelings and reactions – funny, witty, serious, playful, you name it.
Oatly's packaging is a good example. Its English copy isn't preachy, but it's clearly making a statement about the milk industry. Trying to recreate that same effect in German could risk turning into something along the lines of “we adhere to these super long and complicatedly named guidelines”, which becomes boring to read. This is where localisation starts to overlap with copywriting. You're not trying to reproduce the exact sentence; you're trying to recreate what the original sentence does.
I enjoyed Vita Cola’s, an East German fizzy drink brand, “Wer sagt denn, …” campaign from 2022.
“Who said that …” works in English too, but I'd probably make the second part of the sentence a bit cheekier and really lean into that playful vibe. Otherwise, it could sound a little defensive rather than confidently cheeky.
German: Wer sagt denn, ein Original muss allen schmecken? Possible UK adaptation: Who says an original has to be everyone's cup of tea?
The words aren't a direct translation, but the playful attitude is closer to what I'd want the English version to communicate. "Wer sagt denn," has a cheeky feel to it, so I'd keep that sense of challenging the reader while using an expression that's familiar in the UK to convey the idea that an original doesn't have to appeal to everyone.
These types of decisions get lost when localisation is treated as a word-for-word translation exercise. Words can be translated easily, recreating the feeling is the challenge.
And that's where knowing your target audience becomes important.
That's the real difference between translation and localisation: you're not just asking what the German text says. You're asking what the brand is trying to achieve, and how to achieve the same thing for a British audience.
Who are you trying to be in the UK?
If you're a German brand looking to sell in the UK, you need to think about who you want to speak to.
Who are your customers? Where are they based? What do they expect from the brands they buy from? What kind of language will make them feel at home?
But you also need to think about who you are as a brand and how you want to be perceived.
If you're playful in German, find a way to be playful in English. If you're more restrained in German, that doesn't mean you suddenly need to be loud and cheeky just because you're writing for a British audience. It's about finding the point where your brand identity and your target audience meet. You need to think about who will see your brand and how you want them to perceive it.
And you don’t have to localise everything
At this point, you might be thinking, “This sounds like a lot of work”. And yes, localisation can be a big process. But it can be done strategically.
You don’t need to revamp your entire website at once. Instead, think about where you really want to show off your brand identity and connect with your customers, then start there.
Not everything needs to be localised in the same way, either.
I’d translate legal texts (my personal recommendation is doing this with a qualified translator who knows their stuff) rather than localise them, so that they remain compliant. I would localise product descriptions, keywords, and other consumer-facing copy so that you’re using wording that UK consumers actually Google and expect to see.
Your homepage, product pages, calls to action, and newsletters are all places where your communication can make a real difference to how a potential customer perceives your brand. Whereas a few snippets inside a customer account area probably don't need quite the same attention.
So start with your homepage. Look at your German brand book and decide which parts of your personality you want to bring over into English. Then get localising.
Localisation takes translation a step further. It’s not just about making your English technically correct, but about making your brand feel like itself in another market.
And that’s the difference between a British customer simply understanding your website and creating a website that feels like it was actually written for them.
I'm Cathy, a British English translator based in northern Germany, specialising in website localisation for German companies.
I help brands turn translated content into natural, publish-ready English so their websites sound professional, credible and clear to international customers.
Explore more thoughts on translation, localisation and British communication in my Knowledge Hub.
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