An interesting cultural phenomenon is taking place because of automated translation services like Google Translate. I learned of it in another thread on HN a few months ago. People are realizing that what they write will be translated by machine and are adjusting their written language accordingly. This is one of those interesting side effects of tech on culture that is not immediately obvious, I think.
It's basically an extension of "international English" which avoids things like phrasal verbs or coloquialisms, but more from the standpoint of, "If my coworker in Shenzhen puts this text into Google Translate and tries to create documentation from it, is it going to sound ridiculous?" And then doing a few translate/reverse-translate passes yourself until you've tweaked the text enough so the input and output is the same. Eventually, you start writing this way by default.
This could be considered the same as telegram abbreviations, or even text-speak like "LOL" or whatever, but the key in this instance is we're changing our way of communicating based on what a computer can understand, not a fellow human.
> People are realizing that what they write will be translated by machine and are adjusting their written language accordingly.
Machine translation is becoming part of foreign-language education, too. In Japan, some teachers of English have started introducing their students to MT and showing them how to use it to communicate better in English. One technique for a native Japanese speaker to use MT when writing English is to modify the Japanese input so that it is translated more accurately. For example, subjects are often omitted from Japanese sentences when they can be understood from the context, and MT regularly mistranslates such sentences; the English output improves if all subjects are made explicit in the Japanese input.
The use of MT in foreign-language education, however, makes some educators and students uncomfortable, as it is not yet known whether reliance on MT when studying a foreign language hinders, helps, or has no effect on long-term language acquisition.
A paper discussing these and related issues is here:
You've misunderstood the parent. He's not suggesting that you speak in order to attain some predicted Google Translate output, but instead it's helpful to use precise language that doesn't rely on a shared contextual understanding.
For example, you'd use the phrase "upload it to the server" rather than "put it on the server" - the verb "upload" is unambiguous and lets both the recipient and the translation software know that "server" is referring to a computer system.
It's basically an extension of "international English" which avoids things like phrasal verbs or coloquialisms, but more from the standpoint of, "If my coworker in Shenzhen puts this text into Google Translate and tries to create documentation from it, is it going to sound ridiculous?" And then doing a few translate/reverse-translate passes yourself until you've tweaked the text enough so the input and output is the same. Eventually, you start writing this way by default.
This could be considered the same as telegram abbreviations, or even text-speak like "LOL" or whatever, but the key in this instance is we're changing our way of communicating based on what a computer can understand, not a fellow human.