I was chatting with a colleague who's culturally aware and he talks to me in Italian whenever he can. We've been discussing how life is always full of surprises and he used an automatic translation tool to say something very deep and profound in my own language. I appreciated the tentative and the end result wasn't too bad from a language perspective. The issue was with the meaning itself.
The lesson for me? Tools can translate words well, but not intentions of speech.
Humans are sometimes affected by the same disease. We get the words. We hear them. However we miss the real sense. The next time I speak/listen to someone who has a different background and culture I'll make sure to dig a bit more into his intentions and reasons.
No comments:
Post a Comment