Your brand already speaks Italian.
I find where it sounds translated.

Italian localization and Italian SEO/GEO for brands and agencies in the DACH region selling to Italy. Texts that Italian customers read as written in Italian, and that hold up in Google as well as in the answers ChatGPT or Gemini give them.

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Prefer email? Send one page to contact@linguisticqa.com: written reply within 2 working days.

Vienna. Remote, for brands and agencies in DACH and Italy.

01 / findings

Three findings from real work

From QA passes on a European marketplace’s seller documentation, DE→IT. Client details are removed; the patterns are not. None of these is a typo, and none would be caught by reading the Italian on its own.

01 / Verified

The threshold that disappeared

Help-centre page on cancellation fees.

The German source lists two consecutive rate bands in a two-item bullet list; the higher band carries double the fee. The second Italian bullet is not a translation of the second German rule. It is a near-verbatim paraphrase of the first (one verb changed), different enough to slip past a duplicate-text check, close enough to give the copy away. The stricter band, and its higher fee, simply do not exist in Italian.

Both Italian bullets are grammatically flawless. Reading the Italian alone tells you nothing. You see it only by aligning the German list item by item and noticing that a number is gone.

VerifiedRead the raw HTML around the point to confirm both items sit in the same list, rather than an artefact of my alignment script.

Critical: direct commercial impact on a published fee policy.
02 / Verified

Two translations of the same page, never reconciled

Regulatory page in the seller help centre.

Two independent Italian files existed for one German source: same title, same source date, same starting content. They do not differ by an oversight; they diverge systematically, as if produced by two people who never spoke.

ElementAB
Procedure stepFase 1 / 2 / 3Passaggio 1 / 2 / 3
Nationalitymercato olandesemercato neerlandese
WEEE acronymWEEE/AEEARAEE
Take-back schemeritiro 1:1ritiro uno contro uno
Closing formulaEsclusione di responsabilitàDisclaimer

One version pairs the English and Italian acronyms inside the same parenthesis, where the standard Italian term alone (RAEE) is correct and sufficient. One typo is an accident; two complete, independent translations in circulation is a process failure, and precisely what translation memories and locked glossaries exist to prevent. A reader comparing two help pages sees two legal vocabularies for one concept.

Medium: terminology governance, not a single document.
03 / Verified

The link that vanished from one market

Published seller case study on international expansion.

The source names two markets in the same sentence, both as live links. The Italian keeps the link on the first and drops it on the second: same string, plain text, no anchor.

I did not find this by reading. Both versions are grammatically and semantically identical. The structural element count between source and target did not match, 24 blocks against 23, and I traced the missing element by hand. It is the only one of the three found by structural diff rather than by reading, and it needs the tooling and the patience to compare HTML element by element instead of text line by line.

Minor: the Italian visitor loses a shortcut, nothing more.

OpenThe same pass checked and discarded several other suspects: a VAT table across eight countries, a holiday calendar across six, a fee table across twelve product categories, nine country/IBAN pairs. All correct, line by line. Two structural count mismatches on other documents remain unresolved and are recorded as open, not as findings. The time spent ruling things out is the part of an audit nobody sees, and it is what separates a check from a list of suspicions.

The full case: what I checked, what I ruled out and why there are no result figures →

02 / review

What a review looks like

One product text. Three problems a spell-checker won’t see.

Source · DE

Unsere Wanderschuhe sind wasserdicht und bieten auch auf langen Touren optimalen Halt. Jetzt bestellen und kostenlos zurücksenden.

Italian version · IT

Le nostre scarpe da escursionismo1 sono impermeabili e offrono anche nei tour lunghi un appoggio ottimale2. Ordina ora e rispedisci gratuitamente3.

  1. 1 · Search term: Italians search for “scarpe da trekking”. “Scarpe da escursionismo” is correct Italian, but few people type it: the page misses the term that brings traffic.
  2. 2 · Calque: “Optimaler Halt” carried over word for word. Native Italian product copy says the shoe “resta stabile”.
  3. 3 · Convention: Italian shops write “Reso gratuito”. “Rispedisci gratuitamente” is understandable, and it reads as translated in the one line that should build trust.

A spell-checker finds nothing here. Your Italian customers notice all three problems. Google notices the first.

Six typical issues, reconstructed to show the shape of a report. Each row is one piece of text: what the Italian version says, why it fails, how severe it is and what to write instead. A real report ranks issues by frequency and impact, so you know where to start. The three findings above come from actual client work.

SourceItalian versionIssueSeverityFix
WiderrufsrechtDiritto di revocaLegal terminology: Italian consumer law calls it “diritto di recesso”. The wrong term in the terms of sale is a liability.CriticalDiritto di recesso
SaleSaleEnglish loan left in place. In Italian “sale” means salt, and Italian shoppers search for “saldi”.MediumSaldi
Damen-Laufschuhe BestsellerBestseller scarpe da corsa per signoreRegister and search term: “signore” sounds dated and nobody searches for it. The target term is “scarpe running donna”.MediumScarpe running donna più vendute
FAQ: Is the jacket waterproof?La giacca è waterproof?Anglicism in an FAQ. AI assistants often quote FAQs almost verbatim, so the anglicism ends up in the answer your customer reads.MediumLa giacca è impermeabile?
Versandkostenfrei ab 50 €Spedizione senza costi da 50 €Calque. Italian shops use a fixed formula for this.MinorSpedizione gratuita sopra i 50 €
Hi Anna, your order is on its way!Ciao Anna, il tuo ordine è sulla sua strada!Literal calque, close to meaningless in Italian.MediumCiao Anna, il tuo ordine è in arrivo!

Pattern across the sample: none of the six is a spelling or grammar mistake. Two cost you search traffic, one is a legal risk, and three make the shop read as translated.

03 / notes

Notes on Italian for DACH brands

Translated keywords are not keywords

A keyword list translated from German gives you terms that are correct and rarely searched. Italian search has its own habits: sometimes English where German uses German (“scarpe running” for “Laufschuhe”), sometimes the other way round. Keyword research has to start again in Italian, from what people actually type.

Du, Sie, tu, Lei

Many German brands move from “Sie” to “du” as a brand decision. In Italian, “tu” is the norm for consumer brands, but a shop with “tu” on the product pages and “Lei” in the terms of sale reads like two different companies. The register has to be decided once, written down and kept.

AI assistants quote what you wrote

When ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity answer an Italian question about your product, they build the answer from text they find, often your own pages. A calque on your site turns into a calque in the answer, now presented as neutral advice. GEO in Italian starts with Italian worth quoting.

04 / process

How it works

  1. Free review

    You book a 30-minute call and send me one Italian page (a product page, a landing page, a category text) at least three working days before it. I review it in advance, and in the call I show you what a native reader notices and whether it looks systematic.

  2. Proposal

    If there is work worth doing, you get a written proposal with scope, deliverables, timeline and price.

  3. Project or ongoing

    A one-off project, or a monthly slot for brands that publish Italian content regularly.

05 / services

Services

Italian is the only target language I work in. Each engagement ends with something your team can use straight away, from publish-ready Italian pages to a QA report with sign-off.

01

Italian Localization

DE/EN→IT localization of shop and product pages, websites, campaigns, newsletters and UI. Written for Italian readers, with a glossary and style guide so your brand voice stays consistent across pages and releases.

Service page →
02

Italian SEO & GEO

Italian keyword research and on-page work for your localized pages, plus a review of how ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity describe your brand in Italian. Getting cited is a technical problem. Getting cited in good Italian is a linguistic one, and that is the part I handle.

Service page →
03

Italian Linguistic QA

Independent review of Italian content before or after release: agency translations, machine-translated or AI-generated text, legal and checkout copy. Findings by severity, corrected text and documented sign-off.

Service page →
→
Collaboration model

White-label for agencies

Translation, SEO and marketing agencies can offer Italian under their own name. I work inside your process and tools, deliver to your project managers and don’t contact your clients unless you ask me to. Available for all three services above.

Service page →
Alessio Di Rubbo
06 / about

Who you’ll work with

Alessio Di Rubbo. Native Italian, MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Vienna, working from Vienna in German and English.

Since 2015 I’ve localized marketing, e-commerce and technical content from German and English into Italian, directly and through agencies such as Translated and Tolq. I ran the end-to-end Italian launch of Kaufland’s online marketplace, including the Italian style guide and glossary. Most Italian that doesn’t work isn’t wrong. It was simply never written for an Italian reader, and that is the gap I close.

Direct client: Kaufland. Brands I’ve worked on through agencies: Amazon, NVIDIA, Stellantis, Swarovski, Sixt.

Full profile →

contact@linguisticqa.com · LinkedIn

Send me one Italian page. I’ll tell you what a native reader notices.

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Written reply within 2 working days, no call needed.

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