In an increasingly globalized digital landscape, companies must ensure their web applications and digital content are accessible and readable across multiple languages. However, traditional design approaches often fail to account for text expansion, diacritics, and alignment shifts that occur when translating content. These issues can result in broken layouts, truncated text, or loss of brand consistency. To create a seamless multilingual experience, designers and developers must work in tandem to build adaptable, flexible, and scalable interfaces.
The key to designing for translations is a development-driven approach that incorporates dynamic text handling, flexible layouts, and typography that supports international scripts. By establishing best practices early in the design process, companies can avoid costly post-production fixes and ensure their digital experiences remain visually and functionally consistent across different languages.
Company: Owens Corning, Fortune 500
Role: Lead Strategist & Designer
Tools: Figma, Google Developer, GitHub
When translating content from English to languages such as German, Finnish, or French, text expansion of up to 35% can occur. Conversely, languages such as Chinese or Japanese may require less horizontal space but more vertical consideration. Additionally, certain languages employ diacritics that affect line spacing and readability. Without proactive design solutions, these variations can disrupt the user experience, leading to unreadable text or compromised layouts.
To understand translations from an English-speaking perspective, it's essential to grasp the concept of diacritics.
Diacritics are marks, such as accents or cedillas, placed above or below a letter to indicate a variation in pronunciation compared to the same letter without a mark or with a different one. They are widely used in many languages, including French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Czech, and Swedish. Below are some examples of diacritics.
à è ù â ê î ô û ü ë ï ñ ç å ø
English has incorporated countless "loanwords"—terms adopted from other languages into its lexicon. However, when writing these words in English, we often omit the diacritics present in their original forms. Examples include souvenir, entrepreneur, and restaurant. There are exceptions, such as fiancé or jalapeño, where diacritics are retained.
While English is often considered the international language of business, UX design must account for a diverse range of languages and cultural contexts. With a focus on user-centric design and a growing global audience, it is our responsibility to create designs that are inclusive and adaptable. Establishing best practices that accommodate linguistic diversity lays a strong foundation for an ever-evolving digital landscape.
After identifying the languages and character sets our designs needed to support, I began experimenting with diacritics using Figma and Google Developer Tools. The goal was to test how these characters functioned within our existing branding and design system. One significant challenge was that our team had no authority to alter the company’s branding, as branding decisions fell outside our scope. Instead, our responsibility was to align the digital landscape—including the website and other products—with the established brand.
The brand guidelines specified Oswald Semi-Bold in all caps as the main heading style. This posed several issues with diacritics, particularly at the current text size and line height defined within the design system. Adjusting these parameters while adhering to brand requirements became a key focus of the project.
Incorporating best practices for developing international and global content is essential to ensure that web designs are both user-centric and culturally inclusive. Building upon the existing research, several key strategies can be implemented to enhance the internationalization of web content:
Using the original text styles defined by the brand as a foundation, I worked within the existing font sizes and line spacing to develop a solution. Additionally, creating dynamic text styles was essential to ensure compatibility with development requirements and to establish best practices for future updates. The core principles for the internationalization of text include:
While the immediate solution was a 'band-aid' answer to solving the current translation problems for the company, I believe in a strategy first mindset and wanted to work on creating a framework for the next time a problem such as this arises.
Incorporating best practices for developing international and global content is essential to ensure that web designs are both user-centric and culturally inclusive. Building upon the existing research, several key strategies can be implemented to enhance the internationalization of web content. By integrating these best practices into the design process, organizations can create web content that is not only linguistically accurate but also culturally resonant, thereby fostering a more inclusive and effective global user experience.
As the digital landscape continues to globalize, the internationalization of web content has become imperative for enterprises aiming to reach diverse audiences. This evolution necessitates a design approach that seamlessly integrates dynamic content and adaptable typography to accommodate various languages and cultural contexts.
One promising avenue is the implementation of dynamic content systems that automatically adjust to linguistic nuances. By leveraging internationalization frameworks, developers can create applications that dynamically adapt content based on the user's locale, ensuring accurate translations and culturally relevant information. This approach not only enhances user experience but also maintains brand consistency across different regions.
Typography plays a crucial role in this process. Utilizing Unicode-compliant fonts ensures that characters from various languages are rendered correctly, preserving the intended message and aesthetic appeal. Moreover, designing flexible text containers that can accommodate varying word lengths and diacritical marks is essential for maintaining readability and visual harmony.
Embracing these dynamic design strategies not only addresses the challenges of translation but also aligns with accessibility standards. By creating content that is both linguistically and visually adaptable, designers can craft inclusive experiences that resonate with a global audience, fostering a more connected and user-centric digital environment.
