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They won't. It will only help accelerate the move towards concentration to national languages (Standard Chinese in Taiwan and China, French in France, etc.) Why

They won't. It will only help accelerate the move towards concentration to national languages (Standard Chinese in Taiwan and China, French in France, etc.) Why would anyone put the effort to learn a "small" language when it can be translated automatically for understanding? The way to preserve a language is putting humans in the loop. Creating content in that language; interestingly more and more shows are produced in Taiwan in or using non-Mandarin languages as a political way to mark a difference with the big neighbour. And having government support, notably at school (at young age) by allowing partial or total teaching in the language to be preserved.

lettergram 4y ago
The better translation technology is the less likely it is I’ll ever learn a language. To put it another way, in 10 years when I visit China I could probably have an in-depth conversation without ever knowing Chinese. I’d the Chinese can come to a university and never need to learn English, they won’t. Your parents and community will teach out to speak and that’ll be the end of it. It’ll be closer to the Tower of Babel scenario. Every community will have their own language and dialect and the AI will just adapt. If a solar flare takes out electronics we won’t be able to understand each other. Alternatively, the AI will teach us to speak or an implant will teach us similar to the matrix. Those are the scenarios in the next 25-30 years I see.
- version_five 4y ago
  > 10 years when I visit China I could probably have an in-depth conversation without ever knowing Chinese Doubt it. When you learn a language you learn a lot more than the translation, you learn thinking and connotations that require a broader understanding that never get captured regardless of the translation quality, because they require knowing history and seeing previous uses in context that can't be captured in the translation. "Good" translation will do for language what wikipedia has done for knowledge. Everyone will get a superficial understanding, some will pretend that reading off a definitions is the same as actually knowing something, and the world will get a lot more shallow, empty conversations.
  - realusername 4y ago
    All of that does not matter for just communicating, even for the languages where google translate is terrible, it's already equivalent to a B2 level which is enough for communicating about everything. In some languages, DeepL has near perfect translation to the point you cannot really tell if it was translated.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
  The Tower of Babel scenario isn't so bad is it? Instead of minority language speakers being under immense pressure to adapt to and be replaced by dominant languages, communities can continue to exist as they are in their own language.
- leg0m4n 4y ago
  [dead]
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > To put it another way, in 10 years when I visit China I could probably have an in-depth conversation without ever knowing Chinese. preposterous. having an indepth discussion with a foreigner requires not only the language but also the understanding of the cultural context.
  - lettergram 4y ago
    I don’t need cultural context to order a cheese burger. Presumably, future AI systems would be able to translate this context as well. They do to some extent [poorly] today.
    - nfoz 4y ago
      You moved the goalpost from "in-depth conversation" to "order a cheese burger".
larryliu 4y ago
It's anthropocentric to say a language can only be preserved by live humans rather than AI natural language models and digital corpora. No one use Latin any more but we can still figure out what Roman text meant. It's also counterproductive to let humans learn a language of limited content resources and use cases. Taiwan people are highly educated and urbanized. It's much harder to use Taiwanese in Taiwan compared to High German in a Pennsylvanian Amish village. I don't know how to express clearly in Taiwanese "GPS in my neighborhood has a 100x lower accuracy because of radio interference" or "move this MOSFET up by 15mm to balance the PCB thermal stress". If you still have to switch to Chinese or English from time to time, why not just use the popular languages? Even Japanese, a language used by 125 million, has similar issues, my Japanese coworkers frequently switch to English during technical discussions.
- tkgally 4y ago
  Your Japanese coworkers are the exception, not the rule. The vast majority of Japanese speakers in Japan, including those in technical fields, do all of their work communication in Japanese. They may use technical vocabulary borrowed from English and other languages, but those words are used with Japanese pronunciation in Japanese sentences.
  - larryliu 4y ago
    I asked them why. They said it's possible to say anything in Japanese, but English has the brevity for some topics.
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    In Masahiro Sakurai[0]'s series of YouTube talks[1] on game development, he specifically mentions how he has to tell Japanese developers to always name files and source code functions in English, just in case they need to work with an overseas team. Yes, it is possible to do everything 100% in Japanese, with the only English being the keywords of whatever programming system you are working with. However, that is more the exception than the rule, especially in larger teams that need to work overseas. [0] Creator of Super Smash Bros. and Kirby [1] "Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games"

lettergram 4y ago

The better translation technology is the less likely it is I’ll ever learn a language. To put it another way, in 10 years when I visit China I could probably have an in-depth conversation without ever knowing Chinese. I’d the Chinese can come to a university and never need to learn English, they won’t. Your parents and community will teach out to speak and that’ll be the end of it. It’ll be closer to the Tower of Babel scenario. Every community will have their own language and dialect and the AI will just adapt. If a solar flare takes out electronics we won’t be able to understand each other. Alternatively, the AI will teach us to speak or an implant will teach us similar to the matrix. Those are the scenarios in the next 25-30 years I see.

version_five 4y ago
> 10 years when I visit China I could probably have an in-depth conversation without ever knowing Chinese Doubt it. When you learn a language you learn a lot more than the translation, you learn thinking and connotations that require a broader understanding that never get captured regardless of the translation quality, because they require knowing history and seeing previous uses in context that can't be captured in the translation. "Good" translation will do for language what wikipedia has done for knowledge. Everyone will get a superficial understanding, some will pretend that reading off a definitions is the same as actually knowing something, and the world will get a lot more shallow, empty conversations.
- realusername 4y ago
  All of that does not matter for just communicating, even for the languages where google translate is terrible, it's already equivalent to a B2 level which is enough for communicating about everything. In some languages, DeepL has near perfect translation to the point you cannot really tell if it was translated.
MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
The Tower of Babel scenario isn't so bad is it? Instead of minority language speakers being under immense pressure to adapt to and be replaced by dominant languages, communities can continue to exist as they are in their own language.
leg0m4n 4y ago
[dead]
ekianjo 4y ago
> To put it another way, in 10 years when I visit China I could probably have an in-depth conversation without ever knowing Chinese. preposterous. having an indepth discussion with a foreigner requires not only the language but also the understanding of the cultural context.
- lettergram 4y ago
  I don’t need cultural context to order a cheese burger. Presumably, future AI systems would be able to translate this context as well. They do to some extent [poorly] today.
  - nfoz 4y ago
    You moved the goalpost from "in-depth conversation" to "order a cheese burger".

larryliu 4y ago

It's anthropocentric to say a language can only be preserved by live humans rather than AI natural language models and digital corpora. No one use Latin any more but we can still figure out what Roman text meant. It's also counterproductive to let humans learn a language of limited content resources and use cases. Taiwan people are highly educated and urbanized. It's much harder to use Taiwanese in Taiwan compared to High German in a Pennsylvanian Amish village. I don't know how to express clearly in Taiwanese "GPS in my neighborhood has a 100x lower accuracy because of radio interference" or "move this MOSFET up by 15mm to balance the PCB thermal stress". If you still have to switch to Chinese or English from time to time, why not just use the popular languages? Even Japanese, a language used by 125 million, has similar issues, my Japanese coworkers frequently switch to English during technical discussions.

tkgally 4y ago
Your Japanese coworkers are the exception, not the rule. The vast majority of Japanese speakers in Japan, including those in technical fields, do all of their work communication in Japanese. They may use technical vocabulary borrowed from English and other languages, but those words are used with Japanese pronunciation in Japanese sentences.
- larryliu 4y ago
  I asked them why. They said it's possible to say anything in Japanese, but English has the brevity for some topics.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  In Masahiro Sakurai[0]'s series of YouTube talks[1] on game development, he specifically mentions how he has to tell Japanese developers to always name files and source code functions in English, just in case they need to work with an overseas team. Yes, it is possible to do everything 100% in Japanese, with the only English being the keywords of whatever programming system you are working with. However, that is more the exception than the rule, especially in larger teams that need to work overseas. [0] Creator of Super Smash Bros. and Kirby [1] "Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games"