5 ms·

Will machine translation help low-headcount languages or be their death knell? I see multiple forces at play: machine translation lessens the pressure to proper

by usrusr 3y ago

Will machine translation help low-headcount languages or be their death knell? I see multiple forces at play: machine translation lessens the pressure to properly learn whatever happens to be the lingua franca in the greater region. But it also increases competition for writers who might want to write in their small language, increasing pressure to directly address the much greater market. We might see a return to something resembling the "all educated writing is in Latin" of European history until after Newton, just with a much lower threshold. This has some truly weird implications, e.g. once language model translations switch from subtitles to dubbing it will effectively stop shifts in pronunciation, because the models won't be re-trained with an ear to the street.

gumby 3y ago
> This has some truly weird implications, e.g. once language model translations switch from subtitles to dubbing it will effectively stop shifts in pronunciation, because the models won't be re-trained with an ear to the street. This has already happened to a great degree thanks first to radio and the television, as well as the early 20th century movement to “received pronounciation” in many countries. E.g. TV finally killed off thee and thou in the 1960s It often feels like there are regional accent variations but they are usually quite minimal these days thanks to spread of technology. The in Europe, explicit suppression or uniformation of language began AFAIK with Louis XIII and his deliberate formation of “France” (as opposed to just a collection of regions controlled by one person). In China I believe the same thing was instigated by the (by coincidence contemporary!) Qing dynasty, but it might have been a lot earlier. In any case it really zoomed throughout the world in the 20th century when communication technologies and practices were adopted by the emerging nationalist movements. So machine translation will simply continue a longstanding process.
- yorwba 3y ago
  Rapid communication over long distances is flattening regional differences, but that doesn't stop language change. It probably speeds it up instead, because any new trend can reach the entire population much more quickly. Rapid communication over long distances in time might be able to put a stop to that, e.g. if teens end up interacting more with simulacra of long-dead actors than others of their own age, there could be some weird effects. But I think that's unlikely to happen, since someone is bound to come up with a more popular version that has all the newest slang.
  - gumby 3y ago
    Also true, though I was responding to gp’s comment about pronunciation flattening. However now you mention it I wonder if automatic translation might also cramp or otherwise affect minority languages spoken by a small population. Also I wonder if multi-step automatic translation will cause weirdness in spoken languages (again, mainly in minority languages)
- pjc50 3y ago
  Chinese language unification has been a massive, longstanding, incomplete project for basically all the history of China. https://www.globalasia.org/v12no2/feature/chinas-long-struggle-for-linguistic-unification_samuel-s-kim https://www.globalasia.org/v12no2/feature/chinas-long-strugg... Quoting this para because it's so good as a statement of requirements: “What we need today is a readable, audible, singable, speakable, dictatable language which we can read aloud without the need to translate into the spoken language, with the help of which we can take notes without the need to translate into the literary language, which we can [use] at the speaker’s desk as well as on the stage, and which even village grannies, women and children can understand if we read it to them. Any language that does not meet these requirements is not a living language, and can under no circumstances become the national language of our country.”
  - gumby 3y ago
    Though the languages of China were quite diverse well beyond the Chinese Revolution.
  - samus 3y ago
    This seems like a "see three, pick two" problem. Compulsory education in the standard language will eventually solve most of these concerns. Ready understandability by elders seems quite hard to achieve, and might only possible if the new standard is quite similar to an already widespread register. And that's not even addressing the issue that daily life of some ethnic subgroups might happen in a completely different language, who might also be actively resistant of assimilating into the national culture.
- firejake308 3y ago
  > TV finally killed off thee and thou in the 1960s Can someone provide a source for this? Could make for some interesting discussion points, but I don't want to propagate unverified information
  - gumby 3y ago
    Look into the English dialects of Yorkshire. I don’t think this is a particularly obscure fact, though of course by the 60s it was a linguistic remnant of the elderly.
  - samus 3y ago
    It is also said that the TV was more harmful to Italian dialects and had more long-lasting effects than the efforts of the Fascist Party. Also in German-speaking countries, which normally have a much more friendly attitude towards their dialects, the effects of TV usage on linguistical diversity can be easily seen.
    - gumby 3y ago
      When I am back in Australia (from the US) friends/family tell me "you haven't lost your accent" which I interpret as them telling me "I watch a lot of American television". Losing that accent was deliberate, if sad, but IME Americans aren't really tolerant of non-US accents, even when they find them cute. And the speech recognition systems are definitely intolerant.
- wiredfool 3y ago
  May have killed off thee and thou, but ye and yous(e) are alive in spoken English in Ireland.
uticus 3y ago
I'd say the impact on computer programming languages over the next 10 years will be a useful predictor for the larger impact on human languages. The decisions about using Python vs JavaScript vs Go vs .NET vs Rust vs Java etc etc are going to quickly become moot when businesses realize they can get value without focusing on any single tech stack. The next logical step after that is reducing the inefficiencies of having so many tech stacks to maintain - I would guess by having more and more programming languages fall to the wayside, probably starting with the ones that aren't popular and ending with the ones that aren't easily ML-usable.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  I reckon you’re a manager or VC if you think it is just a matter of translating between lanagey
  - uticus 3y ago
    Why are there a multitude of human languages? Well, Tower of Babel. Or at least human isolation, if you like. The point being: for human interaction, a multitude of languages is not the best solution, but for a long time it was the only solution. The benefits of choosing a common language are obvious and historically tested, as already pointed out in parent comment. I’ll add that today, English is the language of business. Many people have learned English in addition to their native tongues. Not because English is so wonderful, but because it gains benefits in the real world of commerce, education, politics, etc. This is a familiar concept historically. There’s a reason for the phrase Lingua franca, and for Latin being the language of the medieval church. Now, why are there a multitude of programming languages? I know, the right tool for the right job. I say that all the time too, but that is missing the point. For computer programming, a multitude of languages was really the only solution for a long time. Now we have a prospect of a human taking a concept, telling AI, and having AI provide what is necessary for the computer to do the needed work. We’re in the midst, just like for a time a culture might learn several languages, in addition to their own, in a trade route. But the trends over time seem obvious to me.
bluetomcat 3y ago
I currently don't see it as a death knell of the "small" language, but as an enshittification of the societal discourse in relatively small nations and societies. It fosters an artificial understanding of the surrounding world. It brings in poorly-understood explanatory models from outside. It stimulates young people to shallowly imitate ghetto culture from over the ocean, not understanding their own culture. It is an impediment to the articulation of local problems that need local solutions.
- pjc50 3y ago
  > It is an impediment to the articulation of local problems that need local solutions. The extent to which US culture war topics drive UK politics infuriates me. Everyone wants to be part of the bigger, flashier show rather than deal with real things.
obscurette 3y ago
10+ years ago Google was seen as savior of local languages at least in some Eastern Europe countries - Google announced that they will support all EU official languages fully in all theirs software, including Android etc. Now we can safely say that they managed to kill a lot of local language usage. Local scientists claim that most of kids younger than 20 have seen a very little texts with good quality - the majority is machine translated low quality stuff.
- pohuing 3y ago
  Not even eastern Europe. The German translation of MS Teams lists my Co-workers as free of charge...
  - kridsdale1 3y ago
    Too bad the translators hadn’t thought about the FOSS ‘free’ distinction.
    - pohuing 3y ago
      I was thinking more of an innuendo on sex work but maybe that's just me
  - Mordisquitos 3y ago
    Not even just non-English languages. The British English version of Windows was in the spotlight not so long ago for infamously describing `.zip` files as Postcode files.
pjc50 3y ago
It's really disappointing that the translation almost only ever goes one way: we're not going to see the greatest Bulgarian content disseminated to the English-speaking market. (Big exception: Japan. China could have gone this route but more or less has chosen not to because of the internal political need to suppress its creative industries)
- yorwba 3y ago
  There is actually a sizeable industry translating Chinese light novels into English https://www.wuxiaworld.com/about https://www.wuxiaworld.com/about It wouldn't surprise me if there were some great translations of great Bulgarian content that are simply not as prominent among the flood of other content available in English.
  - kridsdale1 3y ago
    I’m currently enjoying The Three Body Problem, written in Chinese around 2005’ and translated around 2018.

by usrusr 3y ago

gumby 3y ago

> This has some truly weird implications, e.g. once language model translations switch from subtitles to dubbing it will effectively stop shifts in pronunciation, because the models won't be re-trained with an ear to the street. This has already happened to a great degree thanks first to radio and the television, as well as the early 20th century movement to “received pronounciation” in many countries. E.g. TV finally killed off thee and thou in the 1960s It often feels like there are regional accent variations but they are usually quite minimal these days thanks to spread of technology. The in Europe, explicit suppression or uniformation of language began AFAIK with Louis XIII and his deliberate formation of “France” (as opposed to just a collection of regions controlled by one person). In China I believe the same thing was instigated by the (by coincidence contemporary!) Qing dynasty, but it might have been a lot earlier. In any case it really zoomed throughout the world in the 20th century when communication technologies and practices were adopted by the emerging nationalist movements. So machine translation will simply continue a longstanding process.

yorwba 3y ago
Rapid communication over long distances is flattening regional differences, but that doesn't stop language change. It probably speeds it up instead, because any new trend can reach the entire population much more quickly. Rapid communication over long distances in time might be able to put a stop to that, e.g. if teens end up interacting more with simulacra of long-dead actors than others of their own age, there could be some weird effects. But I think that's unlikely to happen, since someone is bound to come up with a more popular version that has all the newest slang.
- gumby 3y ago
  Also true, though I was responding to gp’s comment about pronunciation flattening. However now you mention it I wonder if automatic translation might also cramp or otherwise affect minority languages spoken by a small population. Also I wonder if multi-step automatic translation will cause weirdness in spoken languages (again, mainly in minority languages)
pjc50 3y ago
Chinese language unification has been a massive, longstanding, incomplete project for basically all the history of China. https://www.globalasia.org/v12no2/feature/chinas-long-struggle-for-linguistic-unification_samuel-s-kim https://www.globalasia.org/v12no2/feature/chinas-long-strugg... Quoting this para because it's so good as a statement of requirements: “What we need today is a readable, audible, singable, speakable, dictatable language which we can read aloud without the need to translate into the spoken language, with the help of which we can take notes without the need to translate into the literary language, which we can [use] at the speaker’s desk as well as on the stage, and which even village grannies, women and children can understand if we read it to them. Any language that does not meet these requirements is not a living language, and can under no circumstances become the national language of our country.”
- gumby 3y ago
  Though the languages of China were quite diverse well beyond the Chinese Revolution.
- samus 3y ago
  This seems like a "see three, pick two" problem. Compulsory education in the standard language will eventually solve most of these concerns. Ready understandability by elders seems quite hard to achieve, and might only possible if the new standard is quite similar to an already widespread register. And that's not even addressing the issue that daily life of some ethnic subgroups might happen in a completely different language, who might also be actively resistant of assimilating into the national culture.
firejake308 3y ago
> TV finally killed off thee and thou in the 1960s Can someone provide a source for this? Could make for some interesting discussion points, but I don't want to propagate unverified information
- gumby 3y ago
  Look into the English dialects of Yorkshire. I don’t think this is a particularly obscure fact, though of course by the 60s it was a linguistic remnant of the elderly.
- samus 3y ago
  It is also said that the TV was more harmful to Italian dialects and had more long-lasting effects than the efforts of the Fascist Party. Also in German-speaking countries, which normally have a much more friendly attitude towards their dialects, the effects of TV usage on linguistical diversity can be easily seen.
  - gumby 3y ago
    When I am back in Australia (from the US) friends/family tell me "you haven't lost your accent" which I interpret as them telling me "I watch a lot of American television". Losing that accent was deliberate, if sad, but IME Americans aren't really tolerant of non-US accents, even when they find them cute. And the speech recognition systems are definitely intolerant.
wiredfool 3y ago
May have killed off thee and thou, but ye and yous(e) are alive in spoken English in Ireland.

uticus 3y ago

I'd say the impact on computer programming languages over the next 10 years will be a useful predictor for the larger impact on human languages. The decisions about using Python vs JavaScript vs Go vs .NET vs Rust vs Java etc etc are going to quickly become moot when businesses realize they can get value without focusing on any single tech stack. The next logical step after that is reducing the inefficiencies of having so many tech stacks to maintain - I would guess by having more and more programming languages fall to the wayside, probably starting with the ones that aren't popular and ending with the ones that aren't easily ML-usable.

elzbardico 3y ago
I reckon you’re a manager or VC if you think it is just a matter of translating between lanagey
- uticus 3y ago
  Why are there a multitude of human languages? Well, Tower of Babel. Or at least human isolation, if you like. The point being: for human interaction, a multitude of languages is not the best solution, but for a long time it was the only solution. The benefits of choosing a common language are obvious and historically tested, as already pointed out in parent comment. I’ll add that today, English is the language of business. Many people have learned English in addition to their native tongues. Not because English is so wonderful, but because it gains benefits in the real world of commerce, education, politics, etc. This is a familiar concept historically. There’s a reason for the phrase Lingua franca, and for Latin being the language of the medieval church. Now, why are there a multitude of programming languages? I know, the right tool for the right job. I say that all the time too, but that is missing the point. For computer programming, a multitude of languages was really the only solution for a long time. Now we have a prospect of a human taking a concept, telling AI, and having AI provide what is necessary for the computer to do the needed work. We’re in the midst, just like for a time a culture might learn several languages, in addition to their own, in a trade route. But the trends over time seem obvious to me.

bluetomcat 3y ago

I currently don't see it as a death knell of the "small" language, but as an enshittification of the societal discourse in relatively small nations and societies. It fosters an artificial understanding of the surrounding world. It brings in poorly-understood explanatory models from outside. It stimulates young people to shallowly imitate ghetto culture from over the ocean, not understanding their own culture. It is an impediment to the articulation of local problems that need local solutions.

pjc50 3y ago
> It is an impediment to the articulation of local problems that need local solutions. The extent to which US culture war topics drive UK politics infuriates me. Everyone wants to be part of the bigger, flashier show rather than deal with real things.

obscurette 3y ago

10+ years ago Google was seen as savior of local languages at least in some Eastern Europe countries - Google announced that they will support all EU official languages fully in all theirs software, including Android etc. Now we can safely say that they managed to kill a lot of local language usage. Local scientists claim that most of kids younger than 20 have seen a very little texts with good quality - the majority is machine translated low quality stuff.

pohuing 3y ago
Not even eastern Europe. The German translation of MS Teams lists my Co-workers as free of charge...
- kridsdale1 3y ago
  Too bad the translators hadn’t thought about the FOSS ‘free’ distinction.
  - pohuing 3y ago
    I was thinking more of an innuendo on sex work but maybe that's just me
- Mordisquitos 3y ago
  Not even just non-English languages. The British English version of Windows was in the spotlight not so long ago for infamously describing `.zip` files as Postcode files.

pjc50 3y ago

It's really disappointing that the translation almost only ever goes one way: we're not going to see the greatest Bulgarian content disseminated to the English-speaking market. (Big exception: Japan. China could have gone this route but more or less has chosen not to because of the internal political need to suppress its creative industries)

yorwba 3y ago
There is actually a sizeable industry translating Chinese light novels into English https://www.wuxiaworld.com/about https://www.wuxiaworld.com/about It wouldn't surprise me if there were some great translations of great Bulgarian content that are simply not as prominent among the flood of other content available in English.
- kridsdale1 3y ago
  I’m currently enjoying The Three Body Problem, written in Chinese around 2005’ and translated around 2018.