My girlfriend reads my postings on her phone. Google Chrome auto translates the texts for her. So she didn’t even know which of my posts were originally in German and which in English. I take this as a compliment. My English is not worse than the nonsense Google Translate offers sometimes. It also means that I wouldn’t have to write in English just so my gf can read the posts. Google fixes it for her.
Which brings me to the reasons why I write some of my texts on junglenotes.com in English in the first place.
- I like to. I like the sound of it and some things are better said in English.
- I have just returned from a holiday in an English-speaking country. It took me two weeks to finally get fluent. I don’t want to lose it again.
- It’s good to add new skills to your skillset. Being able to write copy in proper English. It would take me some time to become good at it. But I’d like to learn.
- A larger audience? Sure, why not. The German market is rather small and for some reason the audience tends to be different. I wouldn’t say more negative but different.
The last time I actually wrote texts in English is ten years ago. We tried to localize a newsletter for an international audience. I was supposed to write the English copy while an American would proofread the whole thing. The first time I sent him my texts, I received an answer that had more red in it than I’ve seen in my entire life. I gave up that day. I would never be as good as a native.
Fast forward ten years and here’s a different me who’s not afraid of trying and failing. I like how things have changed. So you will see me writing some of my posts in English from time to time. Whenever it’s appropriate. Please bear with my poor command of words and sense of grammar. It will get better over time.