AI & Automation
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Picture this: You've just delivered a stunning Framer website to your international client. They love the design, the interactions are smooth, and conversion rates are looking promising. Then comes the request that makes every agency owner's heart sink: "We need this translated into 8 languages for our global launch next month."
If you're like most design agencies, your immediate response is probably a mix of panic and confusion. How do you extract all that beautiful content from Framer? What about the component text? The dynamic content? The carefully crafted microcopy hidden in interactions?
I've been through this nightmare enough times to know that the traditional "export-and-pray" approach most teams use is broken. After working with clients across multiple industries who needed rapid international expansion, I developed a systematic workflow that turns Framer export challenges into streamlined translation processes.
Here's what you'll learn from my hands-on experience:
Why the standard "copy-paste everything" method creates translation chaos
My 3-step export system that preserves context and component structure
How to handle dynamic content and component overrides efficiently
The workflow that reduced our translation turnaround from 3 weeks to 5 days
Specific tools and processes that work for complex website architectures
Industry Reality
What agencies typically do (and why it fails)
Most design agencies treat Framer translation exports like a one-time content dump. The typical workflow looks something like this:
Screenshot everything - Teams take screenshots of each page and manually transcribe text
Copy-paste marathon - Someone spends hours copying text from the Framer editor into Word docs
Send to translators - The extracted content goes to translation services without context
Hope and pray - Translators return content that may or may not fit the design constraints
Manual reconstruction - The team rebuilds everything from scratch in target languages
This approach exists because Framer doesn't have built-in translation export functionality like some other platforms. Unlike Webflow's CMS collections, Framer's component-based architecture makes content extraction less straightforward.
The problems with this conventional approach are massive. You lose component relationships, context disappears, character limits aren't communicated to translators, and interactive text gets missed entirely. The result? Translation projects that take 3x longer than they should, with content that doesn't fit the original design constraints.
What's missing is a systematic approach that preserves the relationship between design components and their content, maintains context for translators, and creates a feedback loop for implementation. Most agencies are flying blind because they're treating this as a content problem when it's actually a workflow architecture problem.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
My wake-up call came during a project with a B2B SaaS client who needed their marketing site translated for a European expansion. We had built this beautiful Framer site with complex component interactions, dynamic pricing displays, and carefully crafted microcopy throughout the user journey.
The client brief seemed straightforward: export everything for translation into French, German, and Spanish. Like most agencies, I figured this would be a quick content extraction job. How hard could it be?
My first attempt followed the standard agency playbook. I spent an entire day going through each Framer page, copying text into a Word document. I organized it by pages, thinking I was being thorough. The document went to their translation team with minimal context beyond "this is for a SaaS website."
Three weeks later, the translations came back. That's when the real problems started. The German translations were 40% longer than the English originals, completely breaking the carefully designed component layouts. The French translator had chosen formal language that didn't match the startup's casual brand tone. Worst of all, half the interactive text—button states, hover messages, form validation—had been completely missed because it wasn't visible in the static export.
The client's European launch had to be delayed by two months while we rebuilt everything. The component text didn't fit, the voice was wrong, and we had to start the translation process over with proper context and constraints.
That project taught me that treating Framer translation as a simple content extraction problem was fundamentally wrong. The issue wasn't just getting text out of Framer—it was preserving the relationship between design constraints and content, maintaining brand voice consistency, and creating a workflow that translators could actually work with effectively.
This experience forced me to completely rethink how translation workflows should integrate with component-based design tools like Framer.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After that disaster, I knew I needed a completely different approach. Instead of treating translation as an afterthought, I started building it into the design process from day one. Here's the systematic workflow I developed:
Phase 1: Content Architecture Mapping
Before any translation work begins, I create what I call a "content architecture map." This isn't just a list of text—it's a structured document that preserves the relationship between components and their content constraints.
For each Framer page, I document:
Component names and their maximum character limits
Text hierarchy (H1, H2, body, etc.) with context
Interactive states (hover text, button states, error messages)
Brand voice guidelines for each content type
Visual context through component screenshots
Phase 2: Structured Export System
Instead of copying text randomly, I use a systematic export approach. I work through Framer's component library first, then page by page, using a standardized template that includes:
Component ID + Original Text + Character Limit + Context + Brand Voice Note
For example: "CTA-Button-1 | Start Free Trial | Max 15 chars | Primary action on pricing page | Urgent but friendly tone"
Phase 3: Translation Brief Development
The game-changer was creating comprehensive translation briefs that went far beyond just the text. I include:
Target audience personas for each language market
Brand voice guidelines adapted for cultural context
Design constraint specifications (character limits are non-negotiable)
Context screenshots for every piece of content
Interaction flow descriptions for dynamic content
Phase 4: Implementation Workflow
Rather than rebuilding everything manually, I developed a systematic implementation process. Translations come back in the same structured format, making it easy to map content back to specific Framer components. I also built quality checkpoints:
Character count validation, context review sessions with translators, and staged implementation with client approval at each step.
The key insight was treating translation as a design constraint, not a content afterthought. Every component in Framer needs to be designed with multilingual content in mind from the beginning.
Content Mapping
Document component relationships and constraints before starting any translation work
Export Structure
Use standardized templates that preserve component context and design limitations
Translation Briefs
Create comprehensive briefs with cultural context, not just text lists
Quality Gates
Build validation checkpoints to catch issues before final implementation
The results of this new workflow were dramatic. What used to take 3 weeks now happened in 5 days. More importantly, the quality improved significantly.
Character limit violations dropped from 80% to less than 5%. Brand voice consistency became measurable—clients could actually recognize their brand personality in translated content. The biggest win was eliminating the rebuild phase entirely. Translations now mapped directly back to Framer components without design adjustments.
Client feedback shifted from "this doesn't sound like us" to "how did you make our brand voice work so well in German?" The systematic approach created predictable timelines that clients could actually rely on for their international launches.
Perhaps most surprisingly, this workflow also improved our English content. Having to think about character limits and cultural adaptation made us more intentional about our original copywriting.
The process became scalable. Once the system was in place, adding new languages became a 2-day process instead of a 3-week project. Clients started requesting translation from the beginning of projects because they knew it wouldn't derail their timelines.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
The biggest lesson was realizing that translation isn't a content problem—it's a workflow architecture problem. Most agencies fail because they treat it as an afterthought rather than a design constraint.
Key lessons learned:
Design for translation from day one - Character limits and cultural context should influence your initial Framer component design
Context is everything - Translators need to understand not just what the text says, but how it functions within the user experience
Component relationships matter - Preserving the connection between Framer components and their content is crucial for efficient implementation
Cultural adaptation beats literal translation - Working with translators who understand marketing and UX produces dramatically better results
Systematic beats creative - Having a repeatable process is more valuable than brilliant one-off solutions
The approach works best for complex Framer sites with lots of interactive content and strict brand voice requirements. It's overkill for simple landing pages but essential for anything involving user journeys or component libraries.
When it doesn't work: If you're dealing with content-heavy sites where text changes frequently, this system requires ongoing maintenance that might not be worth the investment.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups planning international expansion:
Build character limits into your component design system from launch
Create translation briefs that include user persona context for each market
Use structured content templates that preserve component relationships
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores expanding globally:
Map product description templates to support multiple language lengths
Design checkout flows with cultural payment preferences in mind
Export product categories and navigation with cultural shopping context