Hand a Spanish page to a reviewer who’s used to English brevity and the reaction is predictable: someone’s translator has added words that weren’t in the brief. The instinct is often to cut the Spanish copy back to the length of the English original. That usually misses the point.
Spanish naturally takes more space than English. And localisation involves another decision that is easy to overlook: how a brand addresses its audience. Tú or usted? One consistent answer might seem like a straightforward brand-voice choice, yet in Spain the right register can depend on the sector, the customer journey and the kind of relationship a brand wants to establish. Neither issue is really about translation quality. They are about applying an English-market logic to a market where different linguistic and cultural signals shape how copy is read.
This is the third episode of The Local Lens, GA’s series on what actually shapes performance in each market, drawing on insights from our in-country teams. This time, part of our Spain team looks at what happens when brands localise Spanish copy without
local input.
The two decisions that give localisation away
There are two patterns our local team sees repeatedly.
Length
English-to-Spanish translation typically results in text expansion. Estimates from localisation providers (such as Argo Translation and Kwintessential) put the increase at around 15–30%. In other words, longer Spanish copy is the norm and it rarely means the translator has added anything that wasn’t needed.
Trying to force Spanish back into the exact dimensions of the English original can therefore have the opposite effect from what was intended: the copy may fit the layout, but it can also start to feel compressed or abrupt. The same principle holds in advertising and it isn’t always about extra words. IKEA’s long-running UK platform, “The Wonderful Everyday”, becomes “Bienvenido a la república independiente de tu casa” (“Welcome to the independent republic of your home”) in Spain, not a translation of the English line but a different one built for the same feeling. Judging the Spanish against the English original’s word count, or its wording, misses what the localisation is actually doing.
Address form
Spanish gives brands two main ways to address their audience – tú and usted. In Spain, tú is common across sectors such as fashion, beauty, travel, technology and DTC, while usted remains more common in areas such as banking, insurance, healthcare and legal services.
The distinction goes beyond formal versus informal language; research into Spanish advertising has found that the choice between tú and usted can function as a stylistic resource, helping shape the image a brand projects and aligning it with audience expectations.
In other words, brands aren’t simply choosing how friendly they want to sound. They are choosing how the relationship between brand and customer should feel in a particular context.
The takeaway: length and address form aren’t cosmetic choices in Spanish copy, they’re the two decisions that most often expose a page as translated rather than written for the market.
Why English conventions don’t always transfer
English-language marketing often rewards brevity. Short headlines, compact CTAs and stripped-back sentences can signal confidence and clarity. Spanish does not necessarily need the same degree of compression.
Cultural context helps explain why: Spain scores relatively highly on Hofstede’s uncertainty avoidance dimension, at 86, indicating a stronger preference for structure and clarity than is found in some other European markets. It also scores 57 on power distance, suggesting a greater role for hierarchy and formal social relationships. These dimensions don’t determine how Spanish copy should be written, but they provide useful context for understanding why explanation and register can carry more weight than an English-first approach might assume.
In practice, this means good Spanish copy can, and often should, look quite different from the English it started from. Its job is to create the same effect for the Spanish reader, even when that requires different words, a different sentence length or a different register.
Tú or usted? It depends.
This is where a single global brand-voice rule can start to create problems.
A fashion brand may naturally use tú throughout its marketing. A bank may use usted to reinforce expertise and trust. A healthcare provider may use a more formal register in transactional or sensitive communications while using a warmer tone in broader brand content.
Even within the same company, the appropriate register can change across the customer journey. The important thing is consistency within the experience, rather than forcing one form of address across every touchpoint.
A Spanish reader moving from a product page in tú to a checkout message in usted and then a support email in tú is unlikely to name the problem, yet they will sense it – the brand stops sounding like one voice.
The regional distinction that gets missed
There is another localisation decision that is particularly easy to overlook: Spain is not simply another Spanish-language market.
International translation workflows sometimes begin with a Latin American Spanish base and adapt it for Spain later. The result can be grammatically correct while still sounding foreign to a Spanish audience.
One of the clearest diagnostics is plural address. Spain uses vosotros for the informal plural. Most Latin American markets use ustedes instead. That difference may seem small, yet it is exactly the kind of detail a native reader notices immediately.
A single Spanish-language build can therefore be technically correct while still signalling that the market was not considered independently.
What this means for brands entering Spain
- Give Spanish copy room to breathe.
Plan for roughly 15–30% text expansion rather than treating additional words as something to eliminate at the editing stage. - Make tú or usted a localisation decision.
Consider the sector, audience and customer journey instead of imposing one register across every touchpoint. - Check consistency across the full journey.
Review landing pages, navigation, checkout, transactional emails and customer support together. A consistent experience matters more than a single global rule. - Localise for Spain, not simply for Spanish.
Check vocabulary, grammar and especially plural forms when adapting content from other Spanish-speaking markets.
Localisation is about the reader, not the source
The best localisation is rarely the version that looks most like the English original – it is the version that feels as though the original was written for the person reading it.
For Spain, that can mean allowing the copy to take more space, choosing tú or usted with intention and paying attention to regional details that a global translation workflow can easily flatten.
If your Spanish content has been adapted from a global master rather than built with the Spanish market in mind, our Spain team can help identify where localisation is affecting the experience.
Sources
- Argo Translation, “Text Expansion During Translation” (https://www.argotranslation.com/blog/text-expansion-during-translation)
- Kwintessential, “Translation Text Expansion: How it affects Design” (https://www.kwintessential.co.uk/blog/translation-text-expansion-how-it-affects-design-2)
- Tonos Digital, Universidad de Murcia, study of tú and usted in Spanish radio advertising (https://thinkin.es/blog/tutear-no-es-ser-maleducado/)
- Copybara, How to Enter the Spanish Market with the Right Messaging (https://www.copybara.es/en/blog/how-to-enter-the-spanish-market/)
- Global24, Spain: An Underestimated E-Commerce Market (https://global24.com/en/blog/spain-an-underestimated-e-commerce-market/)
- Hofstede Insights, Country Comparison Tool
- Redalyc, research on Spanish address systems (https://www.redalyc.org/journal/921/92169591001/html/)
Article author
Ayslu Akhunova and Ester Munoz Sanchez
Senior Account Specialist & Account Lead
