Being neither a native English speaker nor a native English writer, I often find myself at a disadvantage. Whether we like it or not, we live in a world dominated by the English language. English has become the lingua franca of international communication, science, technology, and much of intellectual life. There is hardly any need to elaborate on something so obvious.
Throughout my life, I have written extensively (not only music), often dealing with complex philosophical, scientific, and other intellectually demanding subjects. I speak three foreign languages fluently, and I consider my English to be at a very good level. Nevertheless, there is a considerable difference between being proficient in a language and being able to express subtle, complicated thoughts in it with the same precision and freedom one enjoys in one’s native tongue. When writing about complex subjects, even a seemingly insignificant linguistic mistake can make a considerable difference. An incorrect preposition, an inappropriate idiom, or a slightly misplaced expression may alter the intended meaning, sometimes even suggesting something quite different from what I actually had in mind. And when dealing with philosophical arguments or intricate chains of reasoning, such inaccuracies are more than merely stylistic inconveniences.
This is where artificial intelligence entered my life, almost like a deus ex machina. I regard AI as my personal secretary, to whom I entrust the final linguistic formulation of my texts. The ideas, arguments, observations, and conclusions are mine. What I delegate is the task of expressing them in accurate, natural, and sufficiently sophisticated English. Quite often, when I want to be particularly certain that a complicated idea is conveyed without distortion, I write it in my native language and ask my secretary to render it in English. This is also how I prepare some of the articles published on this website.
But the process certainly does not end there. I read the resulting text, rewriting sentences, replacing expressions, removing passages, and adjusting the tone until I am satisfied that it genuinely reflects what I intended to say. My secretary, unfortunately, has some rather irritating habits. She tends to repeat herself, elaborate unnecessarily on perfectly straightforward matters, and occasionally introduce a touch of drama where none is required. She also has an unfortunate inclination to make everything sound more impressive, profound, or emotionally charged than it actually is. I often find myself reminding her that clarity is preferable to verbosity, and that not every observation needs to be transformed into a philosophical revelation. Consequently, I regularly intervene, sometimes quite extensively. After all, I want the final text to sound like me, not like an artificial intelligence attempting to sound like an intellectual.