4 ms·

Language eradication was and still is one of the major methods of genocide. Of the remaining 8000 or so human languages still extent, one or another dies every

Language eradication was and still is one of the major methods of genocide. Of the remaining 8000 or so human languages still extent, one or another dies every few weeks... and those are just the ones we know about. There's nothing romantic about this. The proper genre is horror or maybe post-apocalyptic dystopia. There's something of a control freak thing going on when one who would never want to speak to the people who use these minority languages still insists that they speak the same language as he does.

fnordpiglet 3y ago
I think that’s not at all the point being made. In fact it’s quite the opposite. With a real time bi directional universal language translator pervasively available and ergonomically adapted it would be relatively irrelevant which language you spoke. This would in fact be a boon to minority languages or languages outside the language of business and science (today English). It would allow minority languages to flourish without extrinsic pressure to assimilate into more influential languages because its relatively toll free to be monolingual. Most of the pressure outside of planned cultural eradication is economic, and making the economic cost of speaking your native language close to zero is the best way to preserve native languages. Dreaming of mass literacy of minority languages won’t work - its impractical to expect everyone to learn hundreds of languages to meet people at their native tongue, especially in a multicultural society like modern western societies. That’s not a horror; that’s human nature. But technology has the chance to make it irrelevant, allowing people to communicate without assimilation. That said people will still learn languages to do comparative analysis and out of personal drive. That’s great too.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  > With a real time bi directional universal language translator Those aren’t being developed for most languages of the world, only the fairly large languages where corporations see financial interest. Moreover, due to poverty or censorship that has hindered publication of books and internet content in most languages, most languages do not have a sizeable electronic corpus with which to train MT. The OP is right, anyone active in this field knows that your MT dream would actually result in massive language loss, as bilingual users of MT technology feel forced to switch from their mother tongue to the regionally powerful language in order to access that MT technology.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    Actually GPT-4 is at least marginally capable at almost all languages, and I expect LLMs being as nascent as they are, will become more proficient at more and more languages. The thing is that training a LLM is fundamentally simpler to train than prior NLP translation models. For example, I can carry on a reasonably good conversation with ChatGPT in the ancient dead language of Pali and have it translated into cuneiform, then Chinese, then Esperanto, and to English in a new session and the translation is almost flawless from the original. (I have in fact done this) If it weren’t for this I would have agreed with you last year. But I see fairly clearly the way to preserve native tongues is to take a base LLM like Llama 2 and fine tune it with your native language. As people are invested in their native language this doesn’t seem unreasonable. As things develop and sharing LLM LoRa becomes easier, I think we will find that universal translator for all spoken languages forthcoming. But I challenge the notion that not having a translation device assures native languages survive. The same pressures exist. You simply can’t tell the regionally powerful speakers to learn the minority languages and expect them to actually do it. And you can’t expect it to not be a stigma. Humans just don’t work that way, and never have. “When in Rome” applied in Roman times, in our time, and in all times. The only way to eliminate that is to make it not an issue.
    - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
      > For example, I can carry on a reasonably good conversation with ChatGPT in the ancient dead language of Pali and have it translated into cuneiform ChatGPT’s ability to translate into Pali or cuneiform is limited by the size of the corpus. As I said, most languages of the world do not have a sizeable electronic corpus, and what has appeared in writing is only a limited portion of those languages. ChatGPT cannot magically guess words or idioms that it was never trained on. This is well known to anyone working in corpus linguistics. Do you have any formal background in the field? > As people are invested in their native language this doesn’t seem unreasonable. Outside a few relatively privileged languages, people are much less invested in their native language than you assume. Due to the pressures of poverty, political oppression, and social stigma, it can be difficult for linguists to even find speakers willing to answer some questions about their language, let alone train MT.

fnordpiglet 3y ago

I think that’s not at all the point being made. In fact it’s quite the opposite. With a real time bi directional universal language translator pervasively available and ergonomically adapted it would be relatively irrelevant which language you spoke. This would in fact be a boon to minority languages or languages outside the language of business and science (today English). It would allow minority languages to flourish without extrinsic pressure to assimilate into more influential languages because its relatively toll free to be monolingual. Most of the pressure outside of planned cultural eradication is economic, and making the economic cost of speaking your native language close to zero is the best way to preserve native languages. Dreaming of mass literacy of minority languages won’t work - its impractical to expect everyone to learn hundreds of languages to meet people at their native tongue, especially in a multicultural society like modern western societies. That’s not a horror; that’s human nature. But technology has the chance to make it irrelevant, allowing people to communicate without assimilation. That said people will still learn languages to do comparative analysis and out of personal drive. That’s great too.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago
> With a real time bi directional universal language translator Those aren’t being developed for most languages of the world, only the fairly large languages where corporations see financial interest. Moreover, due to poverty or censorship that has hindered publication of books and internet content in most languages, most languages do not have a sizeable electronic corpus with which to train MT. The OP is right, anyone active in this field knows that your MT dream would actually result in massive language loss, as bilingual users of MT technology feel forced to switch from their mother tongue to the regionally powerful language in order to access that MT technology.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Actually GPT-4 is at least marginally capable at almost all languages, and I expect LLMs being as nascent as they are, will become more proficient at more and more languages. The thing is that training a LLM is fundamentally simpler to train than prior NLP translation models. For example, I can carry on a reasonably good conversation with ChatGPT in the ancient dead language of Pali and have it translated into cuneiform, then Chinese, then Esperanto, and to English in a new session and the translation is almost flawless from the original. (I have in fact done this) If it weren’t for this I would have agreed with you last year. But I see fairly clearly the way to preserve native tongues is to take a base LLM like Llama 2 and fine tune it with your native language. As people are invested in their native language this doesn’t seem unreasonable. As things develop and sharing LLM LoRa becomes easier, I think we will find that universal translator for all spoken languages forthcoming. But I challenge the notion that not having a translation device assures native languages survive. The same pressures exist. You simply can’t tell the regionally powerful speakers to learn the minority languages and expect them to actually do it. And you can’t expect it to not be a stigma. Humans just don’t work that way, and never have. “When in Rome” applied in Roman times, in our time, and in all times. The only way to eliminate that is to make it not an issue.
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    > For example, I can carry on a reasonably good conversation with ChatGPT in the ancient dead language of Pali and have it translated into cuneiform ChatGPT’s ability to translate into Pali or cuneiform is limited by the size of the corpus. As I said, most languages of the world do not have a sizeable electronic corpus, and what has appeared in writing is only a limited portion of those languages. ChatGPT cannot magically guess words or idioms that it was never trained on. This is well known to anyone working in corpus linguistics. Do you have any formal background in the field? > As people are invested in their native language this doesn’t seem unreasonable. Outside a few relatively privileged languages, people are much less invested in their native language than you assume. Due to the pressures of poverty, political oppression, and social stigma, it can be difficult for linguists to even find speakers willing to answer some questions about their language, let alone train MT.