How many languages do you know?
I was pretty impressed by this video I discovered on Twitter today. Go ahead, watch it:
Pretty cool, right? I can only speak two languages. So I’m always impressed when other people speak many languages fluently. It’s impressive because we all know how hard it is to learn a language that you didn’t grow up with. Sure, some people just have a special talent for learning new languages (watch Xiao Ma on YouTube!). But still, it’s a skill that is so easy to admire, because it’s instantly demonstrated.
In this case, the guy showing off his skill is a reporter. And of course he’s not “showing off” — speaking many languages allows him to do his work. Philip Crowther is an international affiliate correspondent, which means he reports for many different news outlets at the same time. News stations from Luxembourg, Germany, France, Portugal and more are all hiring him to tell the same story. So not only is he a skilled professional, he is also a smart professional. He understands the value of translation. He understands he can monetize the same work (his report of what’s happening) multiple times.
As designers, we have something to learn from this reporter. Because often, we forget to translate our stories to different ‘languages’. For example, we make a presentation about our design and then present the same slides to many different people. But we forget that our audience (product owners, business analysts, developers, system architects, marketing managers, other stakeholders) don’t speak our language. Sure, they may speak English (and even this you shouldn’t assume), but they are not fluent in Design. They didn’t ‘grow up’ learning it. Neither did we grow up learning the languages of Marketing or System Architecture.
This is easy to forget. Often we don’t even notice the ‘language differences’. And when we do, it’s because somehow our message isn’t coming across. “Why are they not getting it? I’ve told it for the nth time already!”
We can be frustrated that our stakeholders don’t speak our languages. We can wait for them to learn our words, our grammar, our nuances. Or we can translate our story to the languages of our audience, like Philip Crowther. Create your story once, translate it many times.