UX Writing and Localization, close cousins

Lately, I observe that the articles related to the UX industry are spreading like a wildfire! And I love it! I think that between UX and Localization an alliance is being forged and that will be very good for all of us!

Almost every day in my Medium feed does appear articles related to some UX areas. It might be an article related to topics such as "a guide to a better user experience", "a full breakdown of the UX Process End to End ” CX vs UX and why the difference matters ” “what's a UX writer ”….many different articles, quite insightful most of the time

 This week I want to reflect on the area of the UX writing because the way I see it, UX writing is an extension of Localization or Localization is an extension of UX writing (which was one before the egg or the chicken?)

UX writing shares many similarities with the work of a language localization specialist, and this what I want to explore in the following paragraphs.

Let's start with a definition of what is UX writing, I have read many articles, listened to podcasts…. and there are about a dozen different explanations of what is UX writing, personally, it seems to me that the best capturing the essence of UX writing might be this definition that I listened in the podcast Design Huddle.

A UX writer is responsible for all of the text that a user encounters when navigating their way around a product

 In this short definition, we have some key words that help to close the gap that might exist between the disciplines of UX writing and Localization. These words are text, user and product

Text

Obviously words matters. And for those of us who work in the localization industry, we do know very well how words might move users towards an action.

User

Users might be everywhere, (hello Globalization !?) it's crucial that when a UX copy is crafted we do it with localization in mind; and now I will ask you to slow down here the reading for a moment…. take time to reflect on the following statement.

Many companies have roughly 40% of their revenue coming from international markets. This means that the content that it's designed and written in English is only seen and used by 50 -60 % of our users. For the others… the English copy is invisible - boooom mindblowing!

Roughly half of the users will never see our perfect crafted English message

Seen from that angle, maybe we should also pay attention to how our copy will look and feel in the different international markets!

Product

A product could be a web page, a UI, an app, a game, it might be literally anything…. Any product that a user interacts needs to be created with localization in mind because culture matters when designing a product.

Check out this interesting blog post where it's explained how the 6 cultural dimensions of Geert Hofstede's might be integrated into product design for international audiences

6 cultural dimensions of Geert Hofstede's

So when we connect these points we begin to see a clear way about how close the relationship between UX writing and localization is!

This relationship narrows even more when we reflect on the areas that UX writers must master to be effective in their work

1.- Clarity

They are clear, no jargon. A UX writer must be clear. Being clear is important when we create a user copy, and avoid jargon is something that if you have been following this blog probably you read different articles where I do not recommend the jargon, as jargon quite often gets lost in translation. 

Your message might play with words beautifully in English, but it might lose all the meaning in the localized copy, and as stated before, maybe half of our user database will never see our beautiful, ingenious, creative, funny jargonized copy, so being clear is a crucial skill of a UX writer, avoid jargon is also a crucial skills, and both of those skills are owned also by localization specialists

2.- Concise

Good UX copy is concise, it's straightforward, a concise text will make a translator very happy, and something we know very well those of us in the loc industry is the importance of being concise in UI content because a localized version is on average 30% longer than the English version.

During my career, I have seen hundreds of LQA bugs related to text truncation, text-overflow and so on. Now we live in a world of small screens where we spend a lot of time interacting with our mobile.

In a screen of 5 or 6 "space is a luxury, every word in a mobile device matter because it takes a precious space on the screen. UX writers that are concise are creating the foundations of a top-notch localization, and they will become without any doubt in the best friend of a translator !!!

3.- They know how to step into their users' shoes

How many times have you been told to know your audience? This advice is not only useful in my Toastmaster club about how to deliver a speech! But, it's also equally important when you're writing across language and culture.

Paradoxically, a UX writer does not spend the day writing, but reading app specs, interacting with marketers, product teams, research teams, a UX writer must know how to address a message to an international audience, and this is another reason why UX writing and Localization are under the same umbrella and closer than we can imagine

UX Writers must remember they are not just writing for other English speakers. They 're writing for everyone who might use the product, no matter the language they speak, no matter where in the world they are sited. Therefore it's important to have a rough understanding of how other languages work.

For example, different languages ​​have different grammar rules for pluralization depending on the number of items being described.

Different languages ​​have different genders, different time/date formats, they approach measurement units differently, different order in the name/surname, different currency separators, different order of adjectives… so many differences !!!!

All these preferences cannot be ignored, therefore a UX writer must be very knowledgable in the Internationalization area

4.- Brand advocates

UX writers are the owners of the brand when it comes to words

They ensure the brand is consistent across different channels. they are the voice of the brand and the style should be transferred to the different markets. This is soooo similar to the goal of the Localization style guides….

5.- Getting actions done

The ultimate goal of UX copy is to help users with words to get something done, it might be how to use a sword in a game, how to check room availability on a web page or how to use filters in a photos app.

Writing a simple and effective message is tough (I love how Carl explained in this quote!) and nowadays in this hyper-connected world, we live we are bringing this complexity to the next level because… how do you make sure your brand voice shines through in 10 languages? (and I'm conservative here as many companies localized their product in 10+ languages!)

Conclusion

User experience can sometimes seem like a costly process but getting it right can make a huge difference in the success or failure of our product.

• Some reports indicate that enterprises with great UX have increased revenue by 37%.

• ESPN.com found out what users wanted during their homepage redesign and incorporated this knowledge, leading to a 35% increase in revenue

• Google UX team reported a 17% uplift in engagement in the HOTEL search when they changed the copy from Book Room to Check Availability

The combination of UX writing / Localization is the best way to stay relevant for our users regardless of their country, culture or background

 As with all things content-related, writing for translation is much more complicated than it looks at first glance.

You need to be versatile in different areas but not only from a content creation side as it might be perceived in the last couple of years, but you must be also very well trained to understand international users, their requirements, their needs and how they interact with the products.

For this reason, I believe that in the next couple of years we are going to see a fusion of the roles of UX writers + Localization.

The sequence of first the copy and then the translation will be blurred, everything will be done in a more simultaneous way. And this will be all possible thanks to the evolution of the roles of UX writers and localizers.

Knowing how to write without considering the international audience is a luxury very few companies will be able to afford, for the rest to stay relevant I believe we will see a merge between UX crafts and localization specialist… that's my Nostradamus's prophecy, will I be right? Or will I be as wrong predicting this as I'm every time I bet on Spanish lotto?

 Feel free to leave your comment below about how you are seeing the role of UX writer and G / Localizers nowadays in your companies and the evolution that you think we might see of such a role in the coming years!

 Have an awesome week!

@yolocalizo

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If you like this article you might be interested in these other posts I wrote

• Great UX deserves great Localization

• UX Localization? Is that a "thing"? and how we measure UX satisfaction?