My mom reads my notes (Hi mom 👋), and we could say that her English is rusted to the bone. So I guess that in order to understand what I write, she probably uses the "Website translation" feature offered by Google.
That got me a bit worried because in my experience, Google's translation tools have been very hit or miss, sometimes giving me exactly what I want other times some bullcrap that doesn't make any sense. And even at the best of times, when the translation is on point, the emotional value and the meaning behind the words gets lost in translation.
It also tries to translate idioms and other language quirks that don't translate literally so it sounds weird as fuck.
To be sure, I tried it myself cause I was curious about the experience my mom is getting, and it turns out that during all this time I've been judging their tool, Google has been cooking.
The text was translated to absolute perfection, expressions are adapted to fit in French, words are embellished and sometimes, full sentences are even re-interpreted to make more sense.
But above all, the emotions of the text are transcribed in the most accurate way possible.
Quickly, I jump on another note, to check it isn't a fluke, then another, and another...
That's when I realized, "shit, Google has become a better writer than me".
I mean, I would never pretend to be a great writer, especially on this blog where I apply a philosophy of "publish don't polish". But still, this half-assed tool that's been flaky at best since forever now writes my own text better than me.
You might say that this is simply self-deprecation, but to make sure I tried to write a note in French, then translate it in English myself and then ask Google to translate it back in French.
The results were indisputable, Google's sentence were more grammatically correct, the vocabulary used richer and more accurate to what I wanted to say. It felt as if what Google had translated is really what I meant, and what I had written was what I was able to come up with.
A bit like if I tried to build a chair myself without any experience building chairs. I have seen plenty reference points for chairs, I love them so much, so I'm sure I could envision and imagine a perfectly functional an beautiful chair in my mind. But if I tried to build it, it'd be a pretty crappy one, far removed from my original vision.
In this case, Google is the furniture maker, and it's like if I gave it the chair I built, and it made it into the chair I had in mind without me ever telling it what I had in mind to begin with.
In many ways, this is great. My mom and other non-english-speaking readers can enjoy my notes almost better than what the regular reader can.
But at the same time, it's weird to think that they are reading something that wasn't written by me.
Everything is there, the emotions, the words, and yet it feels weirdly less authentic than what the old crappy Google translation tool would give me.
The literalness of it would probably give you a worse experience as a reader, but at the same time, you'd be reading the words that I chose to write.
They are probably not the best or most correct words, they might not even be the words I wanted to use. But they are the words I chose to write.
I would rather listen to a song that is homemade and imperfect, where the creator couldn't do all they wanted cause maybe they can't play the guitar quite well, but they poured their soul and ideas into it rather than this same song corrected and played as imagined.
I'm not sure what we really gain by getting a more polished, more objectively right version of things. Sometimes, often even, the good enough version is the best in my opinion.
If you can read my posts in another language than English, I'd be really happy to have your take on this. Maybe you'll tell me that I'm exaggerating and that the Googled version is actually an improvement. Or maybe you'll agree with me.
Either way, I hope you have a wonderful day, bye 👋