While translation can require an entire guide by itself, there are things you can do to prepare your writing for translation and interpretation by someone who isn’t a fluent speaker in the language you are writing in. This process is called Content Internationalization.

There are processes that happen throughout the product design and development process, from preparing images and storing strings separate from code, but there are also things you can bake into your writing process that help the content development process.

For instance, many businesses worldwide write to certain education standards and reading levels to be accessible to as many readers as possible, and to translate more easily. W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) have set standards (WCAG) to create a baseline for accessibility practices on the internet.

Some other basic best practices for improving both readability, and to prepare for localization, are:

• Write in shorter sentences and words
• Use familiar or casual words you might use in everyday conversation rather than lots of jargon
• Use simpler tenses (past, present, future)
• Avoid colloquial phrases, or phrases that are specific to a region or culture
  • “Let’s dive in” > “Let’s get started”
  • “Let’s run through it” > “Let’s review it”
  • “Let’s put a pin in that” > “Let’s talk about that later”

American usages vs. international usage

The following terms are subtly different, and can cause some confusion:

• Anyway, not anyways
• Toward, not towards
• Color, not colour
• Flavor, not flavour

For the most part, these terms are interchangeable. However, one version is more often used in the US, while the other is used globally. The trick to remembering which to use is that Americans bias toward simplicity, so use the term with fewer letters. Anyway, Toward, Color, Flavor, etc.

The following terms can be confusing using a hard or soft S sound: