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Will language study become unnecessary? | ||
Tags: Google | Translation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5587 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 17 of 45 25 February 2010 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not happy at all. To think about how many people like us put forth effort to study and make our skills useful, while some lazy teen could pay $300 for a little translator that does anything. In my opinion this could breed laziness. It's another " I want it, and I want it now" mentality. I'm sure it could be useful in somecases like communicating in a language that isn't very common, emergencies, etc. However I don't think it should be used at all in everyday situations like giving speeches etc. Ugh. Is there anything else people want handed to them? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6921 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 18 of 45 25 February 2010 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Click Here to Read Article: How Google will Ruin Your Relationship
Was supposed to read "Hey Brian it's dad, give me a call." <br> 
Was supposed to be something like " Hey babe, I've just left work, its about 7:15. I'll see you at home. Bye. " Edited by translator2 on 25 February 2010 at 6:37pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5424 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 19 of 45 26 February 2010 at 5:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6584 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 20 of 45 26 February 2010 at 7:05am | IP Logged | |||||
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There's no stopping technology. I'm pretty sure reliable, efficient machine translation isn't too far away, including idioms. Machine translation is pretty bad as it is now, but give it twenty years and it should be pretty reliable. Almost as good as a human translator shouldn't be too hard, though that last little bit of the way might prove difficult to achieve. Then again, in some areas machine will probably be much better, just like they're already a lot better than us at math.
Complaining about it won't do anything but make us look like the record industry. I predict that the following will happen: * Within the coming ten years or so, there won't be much change. The machines won't be advanced enough to make language learning any less important. * Within the next ten years after that, people who say "Why are you learning language X? That's such a waste of time." will steadily increase. Language learning programs will get better because of the new technology, but they'll also be fewer, since there's not as much money in them. Most of the people learning foreign languages for practical reasons will stop, making language learners a much smaller group. Basically, we'll experience what happened to tabletop roleplaying games when the computer games arrived in large scale. People who are moving to another country will most likely continue to learn languages in the foreseeable future. People who are just plain interested in language will, too, though it'll be a quite geeky hobby. And people who are really interested in puns, since they're untranslateable. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6584 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 21 of 45 26 February 2010 at 7:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh, and also: What's really worrying is that Google will undoubtedly record and save everything you say through their software to make huge databases about you. This will make language learning popular with spies, diplomats and conspiracy theorists.
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| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6127 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 22 of 45 26 February 2010 at 8:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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Just seems to me. What would be the point of watching anime using a Google machine interpreter? Even if the box could accurately translate, it wouldn't be any different than watching the fansubs. Completely useless!
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| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7183 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 23 of 45 26 February 2010 at 9:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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Of course excellent machine translation might help us learn languages much quicker too
especially if you hear the native language a second before you hear the translation. Maybe this machine translation will be for the language learner what pinyin is to hanzi or armbands for the swimmer. It will just be another excellent tool to make language learning much easier. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hello Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 5422 days ago 40 posts - 45 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 24 of 45 27 February 2010 at 12:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think there is a point where technological progress starts 'social debates' just like it is for cloning people and all that. If everything we used to work hard for becomes easier to get, then people who weren't willing to put some effort in (ex: Learning languages) will have an easy time getting there, and that's kinda frustrating :/.
But judging from other posts, that isn't about to happen haha. Edited by Hello on 27 February 2010 at 12:05am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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