At Sato Farms, we do not use Google Translate for our LP.
It is fast, convenient, and, to be fair, not bad at all.
But when we use it, the writing suddenly loses its flavor.
Small moments in the field.
The real feelings of a farmer.
The little bits of humor that slip out like an offhand remark.
Those things can easily disappear in a direct machine translation.
Here is an example.
I ate three of them. Maybe I was a little greedy.
But they were good. Really good.
The meaning is easy to translate.
But that little pause in the original can sound stiff in English.
When I work on the translation through conversation, I can adjust the wording and keep a natural rhythm for English readers.
This kind of adjustment does not come from a dictionary.
I noticed something else when I wrote about pumpkin vines and sweet potato vines fighting for space.
A direct translation turned it into a simple explanation of plants.
For someone who does not know much about farming, the funny part was lost.
But by talking through the meaning and adjusting the wording, we were able to keep that slightly silly image of the vines pushing each other for space.
- Google Translate is fast, but it can lose the flavor of the writing.
- Conversation-based translation can keep that flavor. It also gives us more flexibility with farming terms, and we can adjust the vocabulary to suit the reader.
In short, Google Translate is “replacement.”
Conversation is “editing.”
That is the difference.
Sato Farms' LP is not just a collection of farming information.
It is a place where a person who has stood in the fields for twenty years talks about farming in his own words.
So the English version should not be just correct English.
It should still sound like the person who wrote it.
That, I believe, is part of what makes this LP valuable.