About Undertow
About us
We come alongside your team, build the system that makes multilingual content work, and then run it with you. Not a translation agency and not a platform. The team you would have hired, available the week you decide.
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Why we work this way
Almost every company we meet has the same story. Localization started as a favour. Someone needed the website in German, so somebody handled it. Then the app needed French. Then a campaign needed five markets in three weeks.
At some point it becomes a real function, with real money going through it, and still nobody owns it. It sits on the side of a marketing manager's desk, or on the shoulders of one localization manager who is doing the work of a department.
Hiring a full team is a big step, and most companies are not ready for it. Handing it to a translation agency solves the words and none of the system. What was missing was something in between: a team that designs the operation, runs it, and stays.
That is what we built.
How we work with your team
You know your product, your market and your customers better than any partner ever will. We bring the method, the technology and the patterns we have seen in a lot of other companies.
So we do not take over. The person who owns localization keeps owning it, and keeps every decision about markets, content and budget. Our job is to make that person able to say yes to things they have been saying no to. If nobody holds the role yet, we can be that function until you hire one, and we will tell you when you should.
Outside in, and inside out. We bring what we have seen in many companies. Your team brings what only they know about your product and your market. Neither half works on its own.
Who does the work
Undertow is location-independent by design. The core team is in Europe, and the language specialists are native speakers living in the markets they serve. The German specialist is in Germany. The Japanese specialist is in Japan.
That is not a detail about our office. It changes the work. A specialist who lives in the market knows how people there actually search, what a competitor said last month, and which phrase sounds like a translation. Time zones stop being a problem too, because someone is awake when your market is.
Nicola Calabrese
Founder and CEO
He takes every first call. Strategy and technology stay with him for as long as we work together.
Caterina Salcedo
Co-founder and CMO
She runs Undertow's own content and marketing, from the podcast to this website.
Marco Airoldi
Co-founder and COO
Your main contact once the work starts. He runs delivery week to week: workflows, timelines and quality.
Margherita Marinelli
Project and talent manager
She coordinates the daily work and finds the specialist for each language and market.
Around that core sit the language specialists, chosen for each market and each type of content.
See how we work before you contact us
Everything we do with clients is public somewhere. That is deliberate.
The book
Nicola wrote Localization in the Age of AI, which sets out the whole approach
The podcast
The Multilingual Content Podcast, where localization leaders talk about how they actually run this work.
The paper
Can't We Just Use AI? is free to read. No form to fill in, no email to give up.
The Snapshot
A few minutes, no email, and you see where your localization stands.