This week I attended my first coders’ conference: Code PaLOUsa. How does a translation company owner wind up at a coders’ conference, you ask? We’ll post a link to the video once it comes available, but I gave a presentation on what developers need to know about translation and foreign language when they code.

Since the limit of my personal coding skills stopped somewhere between learning BASIC as a child and hanging out with C+ geeks in college, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. But as the conference went on, I couldn’t help but think about how much coding language and global language have in common. And I don’t just mean how code conveys meaning. Programming language has a means to an end, and that end is the solving of a problem. As one attendee said, “developers solve real world problems; we’re not sitting around designing tick-tack-toe games.”

In order to truly solve these problems, positive user experience (UX) driven by a solid user interface (UI) is key. The business case for UX is much like that for translation. Both tend to be after-thoughts when they should be considered early in a project’s life cycle.  Every dollar spent on UX early in the process means a $100 average increase in revenue and savings. These savings are seen in ways that companies might not even anticipate. For example, improved user experience from coding saved Schneider Automation $2 million in reduced call center costs. Basically, better experience translated to fewer problems, which meant fewer calls to the company’s help center. When less user troubleshooting is required, less work is needed toward the end of the project or after project completion. More.

See: In Every Language

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