On my website, I published some translations (all from Scott Alexander, at the time of this writing). They're all standalone fiction works, mostly independent from previous material. This sidesteps my current problem.
Today I read a very interesting blog post by Katja Grace. I initially wanted to translate it here (to French), as I found the insight useful. However, the post contains very relevant links, to a previous blog post, to an external article, to workshop materials, all published in English. I'm very tempted to translate everything, but the linked content will itself contain more links, and if I start, I'll never get out of that rabbit hole.
Then I thought about Slate.fr (the French version of the online magazine), which sometimes publishes translations of English articles. The links are left completely untranslated. I don't even notice the language switch when I click on them, but I'm fluent in English. The non-English-speaking reader is left with the translated material only, unable to dig deeper on the subject with the handily provided links. They can only search for names, book titles or studies and hope something got translated.
So what do I do if I want to talk about rationality in French here? I come across plenty of material that explain it all better than me, in English. I tell myself "oh, no need to write it from scratch, I'll just translate this. And this. And that. *loud grumble*" After some careful pondering, it boils down to this:
- Identify what exactly I want to talk about
- Identify what is available on the subject in French
- Write a review on the material and expand on it using translations
The difficult part is the second step. I'm so used to read mostly English content that I don't know what is on the French-speaking Web. A new goal for the next few weeks will be to collect every resource I can find about, say, rationality, and publish them here, with a review, sometimes. It will be a good start.