Because the blog is meant to help me understand what makes my brain aware of what my conscious self is, I have to deal with the problem of understanding the boundaries between different cultures. Crossing the border between the conscious and the unconscious can be related to translation. During the supervision of a Chinese Ph.D. student I was confronted with both sides of the problem. Our languages are so different that our ways of displaying thought structures is sometimes incompatible, meaning that (i) for a publication in English the Chinese way of thinking must be domesticated in that context and (ii) that this must be done reciprocally when the process is discussed from both perspectives.
I want to simulate this discussion process by using Google translate (for example back and forth and back) while writing blog posts. Whenever I have the time, I look for ways to formulate the content I want to convey in a language I know that Google can make an acceptable translation. This way, differences in language thinking may become visible. In addition to Chinese (which I don’t know at all – my Chinese is google-translate Chinese) I also include English, because the same argument applies to Dutch-English domestication processes. Apart from unpredictable side effects in the field of literary quality, the content of the blog can thus be made accessible to English, Chinese and Dutch native speakers.