The Hidden Cost of Bad Writing

Why your global content strategy fails before it even reaches translators

If you've ever wondered why your translated content feels clunky, confusing, or just plain wrong, the problem might not be your translators. It might be your original English content.

After years of working with global teams, I've learned something: the quality of your translation is only as good as your source material. No amount of skilled translation can fix fundamentally unclear writing. But here's the good news: with some intentional changes to how you write, you can dramatically improve your translated content while making your English clearer too.

The Foundation: Write Like Your Reader Doesn't Speak English

This might sound counterintuitive, but the best source content for translation is written as if your primary audience doesn't speak English fluently. This forces you to be clearer, more direct, and less reliant on cultural assumptions.

Keep Sentences Short and Simple

Instead of:

"The implementation of our new customer relationship management system, which has been in development for over eighteen months and represents a significant investment in our technological infrastructure, will enable our sales team to more effectively track, manage, and nurture leads through the entire customer acquisition funnel."

Write:

"Our new CRM system launches next month. It will help our sales team track leads more effectively. The team can now manage the entire customer journey from first contact to purchase."

The second version is easier to understand in English and much easier for translators to work with. Each sentence has one clear idea.

Use Active Voice

Instead of:

"Mistakes were made in the configuration process."

Write:

"The team made configuration mistakes."

Active voice eliminates ambiguity about who did what. In many languages, this clarity is essential for proper grammar and meaning.

Avoid Cultural References and Slang

Instead of:

"Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater when redesigning your homepage."

Write:

"Keep the effective elements when redesigning your homepage."

Idioms rarely translate well. Even when they do, they often confuse rather than clarify.

The Ambiguity Killers: Common Problems That Break Translation

Stacked Modifiers (The Noun String Problem)

English loves to stack nouns together, but other languages often can't do this.

Problem:

"Customer data management system security protocol update"

Solution:

"Update to the security protocol for the customer data management system"

The second version clarifies the relationships between all these concepts.

Invisible Plurals

English often hides whether something is singular or plural, but many languages need this information for proper grammar.

Problem:

"Configure the device setting" (Is it one setting or multiple settings? One device or many?)

Solution:

"Configure the device settings" or "Configure each device's setting"

Vague Pronouns

Problem:

"When users upload files to the system, they are automatically scanned." (What gets scanned—the users or the files?)

Solution:

"When users upload files to the system, the files are automatically scanned."

Modal Verb Confusion

Words like "may," "might," "can," and "should" have multiple meanings that don't always translate clearly.

Problem:

"Users may delete their account." (Are they allowed to, or is it just possible they might?)

Solution:

"Users can delete their account" (permission) or "Users might accidentally delete their account" (possibility)

The Consistency Rule: One Thing, One Name

Pick a term and stick with it throughout your content. This seems obvious, but it's where most content fails.

Problem: Using "dashboard," "control panel," "admin interface," and "main screen" to refer to the same thing.

Solution: Choose one term—say, "dashboard"—and use it consistently.

This is especially important for technical terms, feature names, and calls-to-action. Your translators will thank you, and your users won't be confused about whether these are different features.

The Context Problem: Write for Standalone Understanding

Translators often work with isolated strings or small chunks of text. They might not see how your button label fits into the larger interface, or how your error message relates to the user's action.

Problem:

An error message saying "Invalid input"

Solution:

"Please enter a valid email address" or "Password must be at least 8 characters"

The Regional Reality Check

Not all features work the same way everywhere, and not all terminology translates across markets.

Example:

Writing about "checking accounts" in content that will be translated for European markets, where this specific banking term doesn't exist in the same way.

Solution:

Use more generic terms like "bank account" or specify the context: "checking account (transaction account)."

The Process Fix: Involve Your Localization Team Early

Here's the biggest mistake I see: treating translation as something that happens at the end of the content creation process. Your localization team should be part of content planning, not just content cleanup.

Early involvement helps with:

• Identifying problematic terminology before it's used across 50 pieces of content

• Flagging cultural assumptions that don't work in target markets

• Creating style guides that work across languages

The Bottom Line: Better English = Better Everything

The irony of optimizing content for translation is that it makes your English content better too. Clear, concise, unambiguous writing helps everyone—native speakers, non-native speakers, and translators alike.

When you eliminate jargon, clarify pronouns, and untangle complex sentences, you're not dumbing down your content. You're making it more accessible and more effective.

Your global audience deserves content that reads naturally in their language. But that natural feeling starts with how you write in yours.

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What's your experience with translated content? Have you noticed quality differences between brands that clearly invest in good source content versus those that don't? Share your thoughts in the comments.