Why My Background in Translation Made Me a Better Content Designer

When people ask how I became a content designer, they often assume the path started in UX. It didn’t.

It started with translation.

Long before I was designing onboarding flows, error messages, and product experiences, I was translating meaning between languages. Looking back, I’ve realised I never really stopped.

At first glance, translation and content design may seem like separate disciplines. One focuses on linguistic accuracy, the other on product experiences. But the more time I spend designing content, the more convinced I am that content design is, at its core, a form of translation.

The difference is that instead of translating between languages like English, Spanish, or Italian, I often find myself translating between two entirely different systems of communication: the language of the product and the language of the user.

In the financial industry, where I have spent much of my career, products are often built around concepts that are second nature to specialists but unfamiliar to many users. Terms such as “interest accrual,” “settlement period,” “liquidity,” or “tax-efficient investing” may be technically precise, but they are not necessarily meaningful to someone trying to achieve a simple goal.

Users are not thinking in financial terminology. They are thinking in everyday language.

They are asking questions like:

• How much money will I earn?
• When will I get paid?
• Is my money safe?
• What happens if I withdraw now?

The challenge of content design is to bridge that gap.

In many ways, it resembles the work of a translator. The goal is not to convert words literally. It is to preserve meaning. A good translator understands the intention behind a message and recreates it in a way that makes sense within another linguistic and cultural context. Likewise, a good content designer understands the logic of a product and expresses it in terms that make sense to users.

The product speaks one language. The user speaks another. Content design lives in the space between them.

The Influence of Being Trilingual

Being trilingual has deeply shaped how I approach this work.

When you live and work across multiple languages, you quickly realise that words are not fixed containers of meaning. Different languages divide reality in different ways. They prioritise different nuances, cultural assumptions, and ways of thinking.

You learn that translation is rarely about finding perfect equivalents because perfect equivalents often do not exist.

Instead, you learn to ask deeper questions:

• What does this word really mean in this context?
• What feeling does it create?
• What assumptions does it carry?
• What is the simplest way to express the same idea?

This habit of questioning language has become one of my greatest assets as a content designer.

When I encounter product terminology, I instinctively approach it the same way I would approach a difficult translation. Rather than accepting words at face value, I examine them closely. I ask whether users will interpret them the way product teams intend them to be interpreted. I look for hidden ambiguity, cultural assumptions, or unnecessary complexity.

In one fintech project, I worked on content that referred to concepts such as beneficial owners and ultimate controlling persons. Legally accurate? Absolutely. Immediately understandable to most users? Not quite.

The challenge was not to simplify the regulation. It was to translate it into language users could act on confidently. The legal requirement remained the same, but the wording needed to bridge the gap between regulatory language and human understanding.

Because I regularly navigate between multiple languages, I am constantly reminded that there is rarely only one way to express an idea. Every wording choice highlights certain aspects of meaning while obscuring others.

This awareness creates a more deliberate relationship with language. Words stop being labels and become design decisions.

Understanding That Not Everyone Is a Native Speaker

One of the most valuable perspectives multilingualism brings to content design is empathy for non-native speakers.

When you have experienced operating in a language that is not your first language, you understand the invisible cognitive effort required. You know what it feels like to pause over an unfamiliar expression, decode an idiom, or reread a sentence because its structure is unnecessarily complex.

This experience reinforces the importance of writing in plain English.

Plain English is often misunderstood as “simplified” writing. In reality, it is inclusive writing.

It respects users’ time and cognitive effort. It reduces ambiguity. It makes information easier to understand regardless of someone’s educational background, industry knowledge, or language proficiency.

In global products, many users are not native English speakers. Even native speakers may encounter content while stressed, distracted, or dealing with unfamiliar concepts. Financial services, healthcare, and legal processes are prime examples of contexts where cognitive load is already high.

Writing clearly is not about reducing sophistication. It is about removing unnecessary barriers.

Every unnecessary acronym, technical term, or complex sentence structure creates friction. Plain language helps remove it.

Thinking Beyond the Source Language

A translation background also highlights something that is sometimes overlooked in product development: localization is not a final step.

Too often, English content is treated as the source of truth and localization is viewed as an activity that happens afterward. I’ve often seen content written in English first and handed over for translation later. The result is usually predictable: translators spend their time solving problems that could have been avoided during content design.

The best experiences emerge when localization is considered from the start. Not because it makes translators’ lives easier, but because it forces teams to focus on clarity over cleverness.

When content is written with localization in mind from the beginning, the resulting experience is often better for everyone.

Certain phrases, metaphors, idioms, and cultural references may feel natural in one language but become difficult, awkward, or impossible to translate effectively. A sentence that appears concise in English can expand significantly in other languages. A clever piece of wordplay may lose all meaning once translated.

Thinking about localization early encourages content designers to focus on clarity, universality, and intent.

Instead of asking, “How can we make this sound clever?” we ask, “How can we make this understandable across contexts?”

This mindset ultimately benefits users regardless of language.

Consistency Is a Language Too

Leading multilingual content work has also taught me the value of consistency.

A glossary is not just a linguistic asset; it is a usability tool. When products use the same terms consistently across markets, channels, and touchpoints, users build confidence faster. Every inconsistency forces people to stop and ask themselves whether two different terms mean the same thing or whether they are looking at something new.

In that sense, terminology management and content design are solving the same problem: reducing cognitive effort.

Whether I am helping define product language, building content standards, or working with localization teams, the goal remains the same: creating a shared understanding that users can rely on.

Language as a Tool for Inclusion

The more languages I learn, the more I realise that language is never neutral.

The words we choose determine who feels included, who feels confident, and who feels excluded from an experience. They influence whether a user feels capable or confused, empowered or intimidated.

Content design is often described as designing with words. I increasingly see it as designing understanding.

My translation background taught me that successful communication is not about preserving every word. It is about preserving meaning.

Being trilingual taught me that meaning is rarely universal and that different people can interpret the same words in very different ways.

Together, these experiences have shaped how I approach content design: as an exercise in interpretation, empathy, and accessibility. Every piece of content becomes an act of translation — not just between languages, but between expertise and understanding, systems and people, products and users.

Translation taught me that communication succeeds not when every word is preserved, but when meaning survives the journey.

Content design follows the same principle.

Every day, we translate complexity into clarity, expertise into understanding, and products into experiences people can actually use.

That’s why I’ve come to see content design not just as writing, but as translation at scale.