~12 years ago when I started blogging, a popular piece of advice was to use straightforward, non-idiomatic language for SEO. I hated it and ignored it since I didn’t want to write for machines. But now the same advice sounds good, to reach global audiences via machine translation
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Even then that advice was based on writing for what the user wanted. What they searched for. I do like the ML take though.
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Well as the translation accuracy increases even that advice will loose prominence but in the mean time you might loose your voice.
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in fact, it makes me think that a style guide should be it's whole own blog post/website. Maybe something to collab on!
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The global audience may not like being summoned in existence through boring mechanical language
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You have no idea how much I agonized over jokes in Lauren Ipsum, trying at least to hew to Latingreek roots so as to have a chance of them transporting well.
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Kapuściński was a master at portable prose. I've read his stuff in three languages and you'd never know it wasn't written in any of them.
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2000: "Write clearly & simply so that everyone, including those without an academic background, can profit from your writing."
2010: "Write clearly & simply so that everyone, including bots, can profit from your writing."
2020:
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