One team, two languages
W Labs works with clients and teammates across Korea and the Philippines. Early on, we noticed a pattern: most project delays didn’t come from hard technical problems. They came from small misunderstandings — a requirement read one way in Seoul and another way in Manila, a “quick fix” that meant something different to each person.
So we made a simple rule: anything that drives work gets written in both Korean and English.
What we write bilingually
- Tickets. Every Jira ticket has a Korean and an English description, with the same acceptance criteria in both.
- Specs and decisions. When we agree on how something should work, the decision is recorded in both languages, so nobody has to rely on memory or a hallway translation.
- Client updates. Progress reports go out in both languages, so the client’s team and ours read exactly the same message.
Isn’t that twice the work?
Less than you’d think. AI now produces a solid first draft of the translation, and the owner reviews it before it’s shared. The same principle from our last post applies here: AI prepares, people decide. The review step matters — it’s often where we catch a requirement that wasn’t clear in either language.
What changed
Writing things twice forces us to write them clearly once. Vague sentences are hard to translate, so ambiguity surfaces before any code is written. Fewer questions come back mid-sprint, handoffs between time zones are smoother, and new teammates can get up to speed by reading the history in whichever language they’re most comfortable with.
What’s next
We’re continuing to refine how we pair bilingual documentation with AI-assisted workflows. If your team works across languages and borders, we’d love to hear how you handle it.