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If you are involved in writing texts that will (or might) eventually be translated into other languages, there are a number of pitfalls to avoid. Just because you wrote your article, user's manual or website in good, grammatical English does not mean it is suitable for the global marketplace. I have often seen it in my years in technical translation and software localization – texts that sounded fine in English, but caused all kinds of problems in translation.

Here are some of the issues you should consider:

Watch your baseball metaphors: Even technical and business writing is often full of references to sports, from "home runs" and "ninth innings" to "Monday-morning quarterbacking". As these sports might not be popular in the target culture, the metaphors will be difficult to translate.

Puns are funny, but they rarely work in another language. Robert Frost once stated that "Poetry is what gets lost in translation", but the same might be said about puns. Puns work on the similarity of sound, as when Shakespeare in Richard III plays with son/sun ("made glorious summer by this son of York"). If you are very lucky, the translator might find a similar pun in the target language, but that is rare. More likely, the pun will fall flat, be lost, or even be translated as something nonsensical.

Explain yourself! You might be working in an environment where certain terms and abbreviations are so common as to be taken for granted. Do not sprinkle your writing with acronyms and abbreviations without giving explanations (at least in a separate document for the translator). Yes, there are acronym dictionaries and websites, but in many cases there are multiple possible meanings – does ATM stand for Adobe Type Manager, Automated Teller Machine, or Asynchronous Transfer Mode?

Popular culture might not translate. I once had to translate a loudspeaker manual that managed to mention Judge Judy, NASCAR racing and White Castle hamburgers (“sliders”) within a few pages – all in an attempt to be funny and trendy. Needless to say, all that had little or no meaning for the German reader.

Think about it: your text might end up on the computer of a translator in country X, who works for an agency in country Y that was hired by a subsidiary of your company in country Z. Of course this translator will work under a tight deadline, so there might be no chance for him or her to ask questions. The result could be embarrassing, but it still would be associated with your company, or even your own name. Therefore, think globally and keep the text as culturally neutral as you can. You might also contact your subsidiary in the target county to look over the text before it is sent out for translation.