Abstract
The paper discusses the potential role of translators in optimising specialised communication, in particular expert-to-lay communication within the domain of workplace safety. Based on examples from real projects, we argue that professional translators have all the necessary competences to support multilingual but also monolingual expert-to-lay communication. Their competences overlap with those of technical communicators. Since there are many domains where technical communicators are not employed to support communication between experts and laypeople, translators may be the first language experts who see texts written by experts for non-experts. To support this kind of communication where knowledge is distributed asymmetrically, translators can work on the level of form, language and content.