AI as Translator

AI as a translation layer unlocks access to things that were previously off-limits. Access isn't the same as mastery, but the empowerment that comes from going further than you could before is real and worth taking seriously.

Last year we travelled to Japan, and one of the things that had always quietly worried me about travelling in Asia was the language barrier. Not the speaking, that's something I'm familiar with, but the symbol-based written language. Not having an alphabet you recognise to sound out words is really disorientating. Not being able to even make an educated guess or embarrassing attempt at a word was really outside my comfort zone. That said, I was so keen to see Japan I couldn't let that stop me (and the family) from having an amazing holiday.

I made sure we had mobile data before we left, specifically so we could lean on translation tools if and when we needed them. In our travels, we ended up in a few places where very little was in English – menus, signs, instructions – and being able to point a phone camera at something and get a live translation on screen unlocked experiences that would otherwise have stayed closed. It wasn't perfect. A lot of it ended up being hints rather than translations — which was fine and an acceptable limitation. Those familiar will know that language doesn't translate directly anyway. Slang, jokes, wordplay – these exist in every language and can't just be converted. But good enough was genuinely good enough. It meant we could venture outside the tourist bubble, into places that don't see many Western visitors. And there's a particular thrill to that kind of experience, as it unlocked something special and unique.

That feeling kept coming back to me when I started thinking about AI and vibe coding. Why had so many people got enraptured by it?

Vibe coding is using AI as a translation layer. You speak in plain language, and you get a working application of the thing you described. For someone who isn't a programmer, that's magic! It's the same kind of unlocking I felt in Japan. Something that was previously off-limits becomes accessible. You're not fluent – and you know you're not fluent – but you can go further than you could before, and that's intoxicating in its own right. You don't know the code or the language - but that wasn't the point. The point was to unlock what was inaccessible before.

I learned Swedish in a previous life, which gave me an appreciation for what fluency actually means. Watching Swedish films with subtitles, I noticed the best translators weren't translating words – they were translating the context. They wouldn't just take a literal translation of the joke, they'd rewrite it into a joke that worked in the context of the new language. That was the skill of the translator – the real expertise was in meaning, not the text. That's what a fluent programmer does too: they don't just write code, they think about it in a context that goes well beyond a literal translation. How will this affect other functions and processes? How will this affect performance and memory allocation? How does this protect data and access? AI doesn't replicate that level of expertise. But for someone who has never had access to that language at all, even an imperfect translation opens doors that were previously shut.

I was reading Darcy Norman's recent post on the anthropomorphisation of AI. I'm very sceptical and concerned about that framing of AI, turning a tool into a person and imbuing it with personality. But I think it's pointing at something real. That kind of psychology isn't really about the AI feeling human; it's really about the user feeling empowered. We personify it because it gives us something we are grateful for. That's the thing worth understanding. People have always done this with their tools - naming the truck or their tools, giving it a personality and imbuing it with characteristics and traits. That desire comes from how the tool makes us feel.

The best examples of vibe coding I've come across aren't about making money or disrupting industries. They're about someone building a small tool that lives on their desktop and does the specific thing they've always needed done – something that would have taken hours of repetitive work, now available as a command. That's not a trivial thing. It shifts time and attention from low-value execution to higher-value decision-making. It's the same freedom we felt in Japan when we stopped worrying about language and could just enjoy being somewhere new. We didn't need to concern ourselves with decoding the symbols on a menu, but instead concentrate on the actual experience of being somewhere new and trying something we'd never tried before.

The limitations are real and worth naming. I wouldn't replace a skilled translator with Google Translate, and I wouldn't replace experienced engineers with AI-generated code for anything that matters at scale. But there's a genuine and distinct value in the vibe coder – the person who can now make something they couldn't before, even imperfectly, even with full awareness of the constraints. Access isn't the same as mastery, but access is still worth something.

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