Brainstorming with Google Translate
By: Vicki Siolos
Tags: Conference, Google Translate, Ux Writing, Podcast

Brainstorming with Google Translate

I’ve developed a trick to help when I’m buried in “the writing phase.” So much of my work as our senior UX writer involves collaboration with others, but there comes a time when I have to put on my headphones, get into a flow state, and pump out UX copy for a new or updated feature. I go through countless versions of a single string before anyone sees a final version. Kickstarter supports six other languages, so I not only shape my copy to speak to the broadest possible audience, but to provide our talented translation team with text they can localize with minimal friction.

As a writer, a thesaurus is my best friend. But as a solitary UX writer, I need something beyond a synonymous word search. In a perfect world, I have the science and technology to clone myself and brainstorm with other UX writers to produce clear, concise, and usable copy. In a perfect world, there is also world peace and pizza helps you lose weight.

One day I felt stuck, and I opened up Google Translate to test a string in German. I took that result and translated it back into English. The new English string was almost nonsensical. I stripped the original text down and tried again — everything came back exactly the same, but the main noun returned as a synonym I’d never considered. I updated the string, and I tried again in French…in Spanish…in Japanese. I was starting to see a pattern. Some of the returns were an identical match, while others were too far for comfort.

The example below features a modal in our native app: an original on the left and an updated version on the right.

​The original microcopy (grey text) simply repeats the title question, but the updated version explains what happens after affirming, and how to reverse the action. This went through several iterations of Google Translate to find phrasing that was flexible enough for translation. An earlier round went like this:

Step 1: English to German

Step 2: German result back to English

This second English version is too much of a leap from the original messaging and it loses the sentiment that you’re trying to express in the first round, so I broke it into two shorter sentences. “It’s no longer a payment option” is an easy one to localize, but how can I clarify the latter?

Step 1: English to German

Step 2: German result back to English

This new copy is short, clear, and works within the context of the entire modal. It also measured up among Kickstarter’s other languages, making its way into the final copy submission.

It’s important to note that this process doesn’t replace your company’s localization experts by any means — it happens way before you submit your final English copy, and should be considered entirely separate. Automated translations have come a long way, but nothing replaces the human touch, which is exactly what a UX writer brings to the table.

As I grew more comfortable with this method, I shared it with my collaborators to bring them closer to my writing process. They were delighted by the idea, and a few designers started using it when working on placeholder copy. One of them said it felt freeing because the pressure to write didn’t feel like it was being entirely generated from within — it was like having an extra brain to ping-pong ideas off without breaking focus.

I presented this to a bigger audience while speaking at Button — a product design conference launched by Brain Traffic, a content strategy powerhouse in Minneapolis. My 40-minute talk was about making it work as the sole UX writer at your company, and gave me an opportunity to introduce this technique to other professionals in my position. In addition to an overwhelmingly positive response, I got an invite to to talk about what we learned from the Button conference on Writers of Silicon Valley (one of my favorite podcasts). I was so glad to hear that this Google Translate trick resonated with people like me because I’d been sitting on it for a while, wondering if it would provide as much value to others as it has for me.

I hope you’ll find value in this too. It’s handy for writers, but I believe it’s helpful to anyone that feels stuck. You can message me on Twitter if you have questions or feedback on how to improve it — everything is iterative.