> He feels that the words, once translated into German, have less power. They have to travel through a surface that delays true reception of their meaning. I gu

> He feels that the words, once translated into German, have less power. They have to travel through a surface that delays true reception of their meaning. I guess it’s the same for me when I write in English. The delay between writing in English and wondering how the same would translate into French makes me able to say things I might not have dared to say in French directly There is an interesting effect where we tend to be more rational and less emotional in our second language: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0094842 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... > In general, we suggest that the increased psychological distance of using a foreign language induces utilitarianism. This shows that moral judgments can be heavily affected by an orthogonal property to moral principles, and importantly, one that is relevant to hundreds of millions of individuals on a daily basis.