A two-language working life

Seven lessons of technique. This one is the arrangement — how a person who works across two languages actually gets through a week without doing everything twice.

Choose by task, not by habit

The decision is not “which language am I” but “which language suits this particular job”.

English tends to win for: analysis and reasoning, general and technical knowledge, complex multi-part instructions, brainstorming, and anything where you will judge the quality yourself.

Your language tends to win for: local facts, law and institutions; anything with register or honorifics; anything a local reader will receive; and anything where the English version would need translating anyway.

Either works for: simple extraction, formatting, summarising something already in that language.

That third category is bigger than people assume, and it is where the habit of switching to English costs you time for nothing.

Draft once

The commonest waste: composing in one language, being unhappy, recomposing in the other.

Instead — pick the language that suits the task, get the content right there, then convert with L3’s method. One piece of thinking, one conversion, one check.

The exception is anything where register carries the meaning (L6). There the target-language version is the real one, and an English draft is a set of notes rather than a text to translate.

Keep a glossary

The single highest-value artefact from this module, and it takes ten minutes to start.

A short list, in a note you can paste:

Terms that stay in English. Your field’s vocabulary that nobody translates.

Terms with an agreed translation. Where your organisation, industry or family has settled on one rendering — use it consistently.

Names, with their fixed spelling and transliteration (L5).

Your usual register instructions for each recipient type (L6).

Paste it into any translation or writing prompt. It fixes, in one line, the majority of what L3’s back-translation could not catch — and it is the multilingual version of E3·L8’s prompt library.

Check what actually needs checking

Not everything needs the full treatment. Triage as E7·L2 taught:

Send as is: internal notes, messages to people who will forgive an awkwardness, anything you can correct in the next message.

Back-translate: anything with facts, numbers, dates or commitments.

Have a speaker check: anything where register matters, anything to a client, official or in-law, anything published.

Most of your work is in the first bucket. Knowing that is what makes the third bucket affordable.

Where the site stands

Worth being straight, since this module is about language and you are reading it in English.

Lrnon is written in English and everything here has been produced in it. That is a limitation, not a position — a genuinely multilingual curriculum needs speakers who write and check each language, not a translation pass, for exactly the reasons L3 and L6 gave.

If that matters to you and you can help, the volunteer page says what would actually be needed. Machine-translating this course into forty languages would be the fastest way to demonstrate that we had not understood our own module.

Try it now (7 minutes)

Start your glossary. Five terms that stay in English, three with a fixed translation, your own name’s spelling, and one register instruction.

Use it on your next piece of writing in your language. It is the thing from this module you will still be using in a year.

Check your understanding

1. Which task favours working in your own language? Complex multi-step analysis Anything involving local law, register, or a local reader Brainstorming a long list of options

2. The best way to avoid doing the work twice: Compose separately in both languages and compare Draft once in whichever language suits the task, then convert Always draft in English first

3. A personal glossary is valuable because it: Replaces the need for back-translation Fixes in one line most of what back-translation cannot catch Makes translation faster to generate

Recap

Choose the language by task rather than habit, and notice how many tasks are genuinely either. Draft once and convert, except where register carries the meaning. Keep a glossary of untranslated terms, agreed renderings, name spellings and register instructions — it fixes what back-translation cannot see. Then triage: most work needs no check, which is what makes the important checks affordable. That completes E10.