Lost in translation

This morning I sat down to write my weekly blog. This time I decided to do something different. Instead of writing about someone else's horror experience I decided to write down my own experience of healthcare. While I was writing my blog another idea popped in my mind. It was creating a bilingual blog. I decided to write the blog in English followed by its translation in my mother tongue Marathi. I was completely blown away by my own idea. I gave myself a pat on the back for coming up with such a brilliant idea. "I am such a genius", I thought to myself.

I had the concept in my mind and writing it down was not a challenge. In half an hour I was a ready with my first draft in English. I spent next 20 minutes to proof read and improve the redibility of the written content. Guilty as charged but I took help of Gemini for refining my blog. Finally after 1 hour of mindwork and hardwork my blog was ready. I smiled at myself, feeling proud that I had completed my blog with great efficiency.

Then came the difficult part which I was not prepared for. As I had decided to create the bilingual blog, the first part was already done and now it was the time for the second part. In the second part I was supposed to translate the information in Marathi. I thought I would be really comfortable with this and would complete it quicker because Marathi is my mother tongue. I converse in Marathi and also read a lot of books in Marathi so there was no problem with my Marathi vocabulary. With that confidence I started translating my blog line by line. With each statement that I read in English I was required to translate it in Marathi. The first statement was translated promptly. First paragraph was translated in under 10 minutes. Again I felt really proud of myself for doing it so efficiently.

Then I started with the second paragraph. This paragraph contained information that was taken from a medical journal. It contained a lot of medical jargons in the content. This is where I felt lost. I read all the lines in English but I was unable to come up with appropriate terminology in Marathi. This is when I did what everybody does - I approached Google Translate for help.

I pasted one line in English in Google Translate and requested to translate it in Marathi for me. The result was horrendous. The result that was provided by Google Translate was beyond my understanding. The technical terminologies that were used by Google translate in Marathi where very difficult and I had never heard them earlier. I took that same sentence and pasted in Gemini asking it to simplify. At this point of time Gemini had completely given up on me. I was staring at my laptop with wide eyes - not knowing whether to thank the technology for their assistance or curse the technology for increasing the burden of my work. I was completely confused by this time. At this moment I started the think whether creating a billingual blog was a good idea at all.

But I was not ready to give up on such a brilliant idea. This time I did what any person does. I approached my parents for their help. My parents sat with me and went line by line for translation. The translation that was suggested by my parents definitely did sound simple and easy to understand. With their help I was able to finish the blog in Marathi as well.

This was another fun experience of my blog writing where I involved my parents as well.