Opinion | Will Translation Apps Make Learning Foreign Languages Obsolete? - The New Yor... - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...on-apps-foreign-languages.html
translation app learning language technology obsolescence AI
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In Europe, nine out of 10 students study a foreign language. In the United States, only one in five do. Between 1997 and 2008, the number of American middle schools offering foreign languages dropped from 75 percent to 58 percent. Between 2009 and 2013, one American college closed its foreign language program; between 2013 and 2017, 651 others did the same.
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At first glance, these statistics look like a tragedy. But I am starting to harbor the odd opinion that maybe they are not. What is changing my mind is technology.
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what about spoken language? I was in Belgium not long ago, and I watched various tourists from a variety of nations use instant speech translation apps to render their own languages into English and French. The newer ones can even reproduce the tone of the speaker’s voice; a leading model, iTranslate, publicizes that its Translator app has had 200 million downloads so far.
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I don’t think these tools will ever render learning foreign languages completely obsolete. Real conversation in the flowing nuances of casual speech cannot be rendered by a program, at least not in a way that would convey full humanity.
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even if it may fail at genuine, nuanced conversation — for now, at least — technology is eliminating most of the need to learn foreign languages for more utilitarian purposes.
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The old-school language textbook scenarios, of people reserving hotel rooms or ordering meals in the language of the country they are visiting — “Greetings. Please bring me a glass of lemonade and a sandwich!” — will now be obsolete
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to actively enjoy piecing together how other languages work is an individual quirk, not a human universal
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Obsessive language learners have come to call themselves the polyglot community over the past couple of decades, and I am one of them, to an extent. As such, I know well how hard it can be to recognize that most human beings are numb to this peculiar desire.
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Most human beings are interested much less in how they are saying things, and which language they are saying them in, than in what they are saying.
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Learning to express this what — beyond the very basics — in another language is hard. It can be especially hard for us Anglophones, as speaking English works at least decently in so many places
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To polyglots, foreign languages are Mount Everests daring us to climb them — a metaphor used by Hofstadter in his article. But to most people, they are just a barrier to get to the other side of.
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After all, despite the sincere and admirable efforts of foreign language teachers nationwide, fewer than one in 100 American students become proficient in a language they learned in school.
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Because I love trying to learn languages and am endlessly fascinated by their varieties and complexities, I am working hard to wrap my head around this new reality. With an iPhone handy and an appropriate app downloaded, foreign languages will no longer present most people with the barrier or challenge they once did
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Learning to genuinely speak a new language will hardly be unknown. It will continue to beckon, for instance, for those actually relocating to a new country. And it will persist with people who want to engage with literature or media in the original language, as well as those of us who find pleasure in mastering these new codes just because they are “there.”
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In other words, it will likely become an artisanal pursuit, of interest to a much smaller but more committed set of enthusiasts. And weird as that is, it is in its way a kind of progress.