Featured image of post Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation

The Problem

The other day I picked up a phrase that still bounces around in my head from time to time.

If you don’t write in your native language, there’s always a risk that details will get lost.

I’ve been blogging in English so far in order to reach more people. But my mother tongue is German. Do I still manage to express what I want to convey?

I think so™. But even though I think I write good English, it takes me a lot more time and energy to write a post in a foreign language.

The Idea

So I had the idea to try the best of both worlds:

Why not write in my native language, where I have a deep understanding of subtle differences in meaning, idioms and vocabulary, and then simply have everything translated into the target foreign language?

The Test

And in fact, what you are reading here is already the result of that experiment.

I had this text translated from German to English by deepL. It took me barely 10 minutes to write this blog post.

The Question

But does it still sound like me? Or are the little mistakes I make in my posts due to the foreign language the soul of my blog? Philosophical deep talk today…