Qualifications. Hmm. I don’t really have any! Before I was at Monzo I spent six years at The Writer (where we grandly called ourselves a ‘language consultancy’). But I didn’t do English at university, and I’ve never formally studied linguistics.
Don’t tell anyone… 
Wellllllllll I’ve never managed to get through more than 15 pages of James Joyce. I’m sure it’s great, but totally impenetrable for me.
Interesting question!
The challenge will be keeping the spirit of what we do in different languages.
You can’t just translate what we’ve got into Spanish, or Mandarin, or whatever. English is full of idioms, and metaphors, and cultural reference points which just don’t make sense in other languages. (Even American English needs its own approach.)
You have to transcreate, to use the awful industry term. Basically it means figuring out what it means to have our values in Spanish – what does friendly, inclusive, transparent writing look like?
So I think I’ll spend a lot of time working with native speakers to get that balance right. It’s something I did a little of in my old consultancy life, and I’m looking forward to doing more of it.
I haven’t… and neither has anyone else as far as I know!
I was running a training session a few years ago, and a woman from that town was there. She was really excited – it’s the only thing her home town is famous for.
As above: I’m gona answer the backwards questions in forward-speak, so everyone can easily follow.
It depends.
If I’m just coming up with what I’m saying on the spot, and the words are individually backwards but in the right order*, then I can speak backwards at about the same speed I speak forwards. But if the words are backwards, and in reverse order, it takes longer – because I have to figure out everything and then reverse it in my head. Still fairly quick though.
Apparently I’ve just always been able to do it! Maybe I was dropped on my head as a baby.
*Ekil siht, os yreve drow is ni eht thgir redro, tub sdrawkcab.
Do you differentiate between ‘salary’ and ‘wages’, e.g. electronic income from employment and cash income from employment…as many in retail sector are paid this way.
Thanks for all the great questions everyone!
Been really fun to go through them. Have lovely weekends 
That’s interesting. I think the differentiation isn’t one that most people would intuitively know, so the question we have to grapple with isn’t what’s technically correct, but what will people be most likely to understand?
That’s where user testing comes in really handy. (Plus checking up on what Google Trends says.)
That’s all folks!
Another amazing Staff Q&A. Much love to the one and only @hashbridge - see you all next week! 
Yo, any update on this getting changed?
This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.