I have been asked before, and I was asked again recently: why are your blogs in English? You are not a native speaker? You are for sure not a native writer? I fully agree I am not. I try to express my weekly feelings and thoughts in my blog. It was never about poetry or literature. It was about bringing my readers food for thought. Or at least that is what it became. More and more I think I have to start speaking in a voice that does not only want to make you think. I want to make you feel. What do you feel when I tell you there is for example, a crack sometimes in what you thought would last forever?
With the honest feedback I got from smart people around me I start wondering.
Should I maybe write in my mother tongue?
My mother first thinks in French before she talks perfectly in Dutch or French with me. ( I need to ask her in what language she dreams) I speak French with my daughters. I speak Dutch with my husband. My dad shares his ideas and feeling with me in Dutch. My friends, speak so many languages English, Spanish, Italian, German,…
My first real passionate relation was in a mix of French and English.
I think am lost in translation.
I am asked to give a keynote on the advantages of multilingual communication for a Belgian University in some months, maybe I need to call my keynote Lost in Translation…
How do I feel?
I feel human, I do feel European…. I believe in many of the European values. But I wonder whether there is life on Mars, but more over I wonder how will I communicate when aliens land on earth, with my body as I was used to as a dancer?
So on this rainy Friday (at least in Brussels) I am wondering maybe I need to start writing my blogs in Dutch. But as I know people from different countries are reading my blogs I might translate them, or let me correct ask a real translator to do it. Because more and more I want people to get the real shades of grey.
