For what it’s worth, I really liked your suggestions and think they’re quite valid. I have made the same kind of mistakes many times and beat myself up about them when I do make them. I’ve even asked the community for their opinions on how to overcome making them (see below):
There is some great advice from others in that thread that you might benefit from. And I’ve learned that many people habitually make similar errors. I will say that since that I started that thread and reading the advice given, I have been able to cut down on such errors (what I like to call bakazakana), though not entirely.
Still, what you suggest (“English Translation” rather than “English Meaning” and using spatial placement rather than relying solely on colour hints) sound like possibly good ideas to me, with the first one much, much easier to implement. The spatial placement idea sounds potentially good but very difficult to implement especially when you take into account people using mobile devices with limited screen space. Also, (and this applies to the “translation” idea as well) we wouldn’t know if they’d actually help anyone until they were put into place.
But! while I appreciate the common sentiment here that “you’ll get used to the way things are” and (no one actually said this but) “you’re too new here to be making feature requests” because there is some merit to these positions, it’s also worth noting that from a UI point of view, if a large number of users keep running into an issue in spite of their best efforts, then there might be a way to present things better. Now, I’m a relatively new user myself, so I don’t go around making feature requests no matter how sensible they seem to me, and I also don’t have enough history with this site to know how often or how infrequently updates to the UI are made.
But there are a ton of userscripts to add features that benefit those who want those features, and I bet it wouldn’t be too hard for someone with skills to make a userscript that substitutes “English Translation” for “English Meaning”. I’d try to do it myself if I could figure out how (unlikely!).
ETA: While it’s frustrating to make these errors, if you do slow down and concentrate enough not to make them all the XXXXing time, they won’t affect your progress very much if at all, and you’ll come out stronger in the end.