Working across three languages, and what gets lost between them

Working across English, Swahili and French, however imperfect the French still is some days, has taught me that translation is never neutral. A phrase that lands with warmth in Swahili can sound clinical in English. A joke that works in one language dies flat in the other.

In the newsroom, this matters more than people outside it realize. A bilingual story is not just the same facts said twice. It is two different relationships with the audience, and getting both right means understanding what each language is actually good at saying.

Swahili, in my experience, carries emotion and communal weight better than English does. English is often sharper for precision, for numbers, for the exact wording of a policy. Knowing which language to lead with, for which story, is its own kind of editorial judgment.

French is still the language I am least fluent in, and I say that publicly on purpose. Presenting yourself as more fluent than you are is a disservice to any audience who trusts you to be exact with language for a living.

Every language you work in is a different lens on the same truth. Losing any one of them means losing part of how a story can be told.