[A little passage from my newsletter’s September 15, 2023 issue.]

In 2022, when this newsletter became bilingual (I had been writing in Japanese for 2 years before adding an English version at the end of each post), English translation was done by DeepL, an AI translation system. Minimal edits and clarifications by me. A clear division of labor.

As time went by, I started “massaging” DeepL’s translation more and more, giving it a major rewrite, so much so that sometimes the “DeepL did this.” statement felt untruthful to me. To reduce this dissonance, I would re-rewrite to make it sound more machine-like, imagining what DeepL might say. It was time-consuming and exhausting.

(This is ridiculous. Why am I doing this?)

Once upon a time, in the 1990s, there was a machine translation boom in Japan. Companies invested money in machine translation, but the technology was not yet mature enough for their software products to be usable. I was working in the translation department set up by one such company.

My job was to use their software in various development stages for whatever assigned document translation. It was an excruciatingly slow process. Whenever pressed for time, we would cheat, pretending to be a machine and translating manually.

(Oh, so that’s where it came from. Makes sense.)

I’ve since left tech translation, but still have this affinity for intangible machines, especially everyday AI tools.

Nowadays I do the writing, English or Japanese, doesn’t matter. AI-san checks my rather creative spelling and offers advice on my equally creative grammatical practice. A clear division of labor. I think we make a good team.

Today’s Special

something new: a new branch
something read: Allie Esiri “365 Poems for Life: An Uplifting Collection for Every Day of the Year”