A Component (previously called a "Symbol") is a reusable block a designer creates once and places on many pages — typical examples: the navigation bar, the footer, a call-to-action banner, a pricing card. When the designer edits the component's definition, every page using it updates automatically.
Translation follows the same logic: the connector translates the definition once, and the translation propagates to every page where the component is used. This is efficient — a menu translated once covers the whole site — but it also means component text never appears inside a page's own content. If you don't know whether an element is a component, open the page in the Webflow Designer and click it: components are clearly marked.