Technical writers have long been the quiet workhorses of the software world, documenting features nobody reads, chasing developers for context, and generally operating in the background.
But something interesting is happening. In the localization space, tech writers are stepping into a role nobody quite planned for them: they’re becoming the connective tissue that holds multilingual product experiences together.
In a recent episode of The Agile Localization Podcast, host Stefan Huyghe sat down with Ian Cowley, Technical Writer at Salto, who lives at the crossroads of language, technology, and user experience.
Based in Spain’s Basque Country and fluent in English, Spanish, and French, Ian brought a grounded, real-world perspective on why the people who write your UI strings might just be the most important players in your localization pipeline.
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Why localization starts with design
Localization has to begin at the very start of the product lifecycle, not bolted on as an afterthought once the English version ships. If you are building an Angular app and you know it will eventually need to support German or Arabic, you can’t wait until the strings are frozen to start thinking about text expansion or right-to-left layouts. Those considerations need to be addressed during the design phase.
And here’s a pet peeve that will resonate with anyone who’s worked in localization: lorem ipsum in design mockups. Ian was emphatic about it: designs should use real strings from day one. When placeholder text fills your Figma files, you’re basically guaranteeing that nobody thinks about how ‘Save Changes’ becomes a much longer phrase in German until it’s already breaking your button layout in production.
Strings are UX decisions
There’s a common misconception outside the development world that a string is basically a word. It’s not.
A string is a piece of interface text that carries meaning, context, and intent. Getting it right requires understanding where it appears, what action it supports, and how it will read across languages. That’s a UX writing challenge as much as it is a translation challenge.
Ian described how technical writers at Salto function as the first point of contact when translators have questions about meaning. What does this error message actually mean? Where does this tooltip appear? Is the account referring to a user profile or a billing entity? These are the kinds of context questions that make or break a translation, and tech writers are the ones fielding them.
This is why Ian keeps coming back to one theme: context is everything. Whether it’s a human translator or an AI model, neither can produce a quality translation without understanding the full picture. And technical writers, who already swim in product context daily, are uniquely positioned to provide it.
Pseudo-localization and stress testing
One practical technique Ian highlighted is pseudo-localization, a method of stress-testing your application by replacing strings with modified versions that simulate the characteristics of other languages. Think longer text, special characters, and reversed layouts. It’s not glamorous, but it catches the kind of UI breaks that only show up when you move beyond English.
Salto has been exploring this approach alongside their work preparing products for Arabic-speaking markets, where right-to-left support demands far more than just swapping out text. The entire application layout needs to be rethought. Skipping this step, Ian warned, leads to products that technically work in another language but that real users find confusing or unusable.
AI-first translation with a human overseeing
When it comes to tooling, Ian’s team has been moving toward an AI-first localization workflow using Crowdin integrated with GitHub.
"We’ve been working with Crowdin for quite a few years now. Some of our initial projects were way before AI pipelines were even in place, but now, what we’re trying to do is move towards more of an AI-first process to improve velocity and make things faster.
The pipeline works like this: developers add strings, those strings flow automatically into Crowdin, AI generates a first-pass translation, and then human translators review and refine. The approved translations come back via pull request, where they can be checked one more time before merging.
"A tool like Crowdin is great because you can essentially work with a translator within the tool itself. Anytime they comment or have queries about anything, that all stays with the string or the text they’re translating at that time.
It’s a workflow that has reduced the time it takes to translate an application with tens of thousands of strings. But Ian was clear that the human layer isn’t optional. AI gets you speed; human review gets you accuracy and cultural fit. And when those translators are people who actually use the product or work within the company, the quality goes up.
Why technical writing and localization must work side by side with Rutva Safi
The rise of the Context Engineer role
The technical writer’s role is evolving. It’s no longer just about writing documentation. Tech writers are becoming what he called context engineers, people who ensure that the right information follows a string through its entire journey, from design brainstorm to translated production UI.
They are the ones syncing Figma with translation management systems. They’re ensuring that string context persists in the codebase. They’re bouncing terminology ideas off LLMs while simultaneously checking how a feature name lands in three different languages. It’s a hybrid role that blends writing, product management, and localization expertise into something genuinely new.
Ian’s background
Ian Cowley is a Technical Writer at Salto with deep expertise in internationalization and localization workflows. Holding a degree in modern languages and fluent in English, Spanish, and French, Ian brings a multilingual perspective to his work managing localization processes across Angular-based applications. His contributions to open-source initiatives, including Google Season of Docs work on translation workflows for Calibri, demonstrate his commitment to improving global localization practices.
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Yuliia Makarenko
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