4 ms·
Sadly, this beneficial activity doesn’t look promising in the longterm. Real-time interpretation of foreign languages through earbuds is already available in it
by TFNA 3mo ago
Sadly, this beneficial activity doesn’t look promising in the longterm. Real-time interpretation of foreign languages through earbuds is already available in its nascent phase, and China at least has begun cutting foreign-language programmes at its unis because such AI translation is seen as the way of future. Once this tool becomes adopted enough societally, the learning of foreign languages is going to become a very niche hobby. It’s already becoming a niche hobby when many developed-country Gen Z are content with traveling and working abroad with only a knowledge of English alongside their native language.
- asveikau 3mo agoI think any multilingual person will be skeptical of your analysis. Translation is not a substitute for understanding the original. It's good that we have translations, but it isn't the same. As you get into consuming art, literature, poetry, commentary, this is relevant.
- TFNA 3mo agoLearning a foreign language in order to get more out of art, literature, or poetry is already a very niche hobby and one risks being accused of snobbism or privilege for suggesting it. Art, literature (of the kind where learning the original language could be important), and poetry themselves are niche hobbies.
- asveikau 3mo agoI don't know your history, but this sounds like a monolingual person not understanding and being arrogant about it. It's not a niche hobby if that's literally your life. Many people are not multilingual as a hobby, or as a choice.
- TFNA 3mo agoDid you not notice that I specified “developed-country Gen Z above” and also China? That was to leave a carve-out for the still very vibrant everyday multilingualism of the Indian Subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa, etc. But for East Asia, Europe and most of Latin America, the trends speak for themselves. I am not monolingual, nor are many educated people of my generation, but younger people in my country are likely to learn only English alongside their native language (and then stop being curious).
- estebank 3mo agoSomeone who can speak English on top of their mother tongue is already multilingual. Anecdotally, people who live anywhere close to a border in Europe tends to speak at least two languages, often more than two, regardless of class or profession. In Latin America, most countries speak Spanish (with the obvious exception of Brazil and smaller colonies from the other European countries), so the every day pressure to learn another language isn't there and English becomes the "obvious" choice. I don't quite get why you seem to discount English entirely. There's always been a Lingua Franca. It hasn't always been the same one. There will likely always be one.
- tekno45 3mo agothey think art is a niche hobby and not the basis of human culture. I wouldn't listen too intently to them.
- TFNA 3mo agoArt is perennial and omnipresent in human societies, but the sort of art that operates through a language foreign to the aficionado’s own, and learning that language would be beneficial to appreciation of it, is obviously going to be a niche subset of art.
- tekno45 3mo agobasic puns and rhyming are niche forms of art?
- estebank 3mo agoIf anything comedy is an excellent way of learning a language: the use of double and triple entendres helps to quickly get exposed to alternate meanings and misunderstandings of words. Comedy aimed at learners or multilinguals can also help, plenty of anglos who learned Spanish can relate to "feeling pregnant" early on :)
- Jtarii 3mo agoPuns and rhyming can generally be translated across languages. I don't think its controversial to say that its possible to get most of what a piece of art is trying to say through a translation.
- asveikau 3mo agoPuns generally do not translate well. Where they do, there needs to be a coincidence where words with multiple definitions happen to have the same meanings in both languages, or there happens to be a similar saying in the target language. Often this is not the case. Translators often just make up entirely new material to substitute in for that.
- fer 3mo agoCulture is not only art. An LLM won't help you naturally drop you a "cuidao chacho que toy mu loco" nor "в жёлтом доме по тебе скучают", nor will it translate it into something that carries the exact meaning to you in English, nor reference any equivalent cultural element, for the foreseeable future. You'll need embeddings common life experiences, and even intonation can completely change the meaning even retaining the emphasis. It will help you communicate, but not partake.
- pebble 3mo agoLet me tell you about a little thing called kpop. Korean language courses are booming.
- Thraway198 3mo agoThe AI will be able to do all that for you. What you're touching on is the difference between comprehension vs merely being a vessel for information.
- asveikau 3mo agoI'll give you a very simple example I saw recently. I saw a dad joke in Spanish on social media and it gave me a chuckle. It was a comment to a lawyer's video and it translates to "can I study law if I'm a leftie?" It relies on the fact that law is also a word for "right". AI won't be able to succinctly translate that joke and have it hit the same way. As an experiment I just fed that into ChatGPT, and it did explain the pun in 6 paragraphs with quotations and a bulleted list, but that kills the simplicity of the humor.
- Thraway198 3mo agoIt can't now. It will be able to in the future, when the translation actually becomes fluent for the user.
- asveikau 3mo agoMy point is that a succinct and correct translation for the pun does not exist in the target language.
- Thraway198 3mo agoMy point is that the AI will have that info understood as part of "being a translator," and react accordingly. The phenomenon you're describing is a basic fact of linguistics. Many things don't have direct translations, but they are still translated by fluent speakers of both languages.
- asveikau 3mo agoI am fluent in both languages and I can't succinctly translate it. If I changed the meaning of the sentence, I could say, "can I study civil rights if I'm a lefty?" If it were text, I might give you the translation I already gave yesterday and add a footnote explaining the pun. Neither of these are ideal. One changes the meaning, the other is hard to understand.
- mcswell 3mo ago1) But for many people and in many situations, translation---including MT---is good enough. And that overcomes any perceived need to learn another language (which learning may be in opposition to learning something else, something perceived as more important). 2) Most people don't "consume" literature or poetry, and it's unclear to me that non-performance art requires language. (I appreciate Rennaissance painting, but apart from the occasional Latin writing I don't need language to understand it.) Disclaimer: Besides English, I'm reasonably fluent in Spanish (more so 35 years ago when I last lived in a Spanish speaking country), and used to be reasonably fluent in German, French, Tzeltal and Shuar (and a bit of Italian and written classical Greek). So I have every reason to hope this study is correct. But I have my doubts.
- fluoridation 3mo agoTranslation is good enough, but quite often no translation exists. MTL is at this point good enough for simple texts and for everyday living like restaurant menus and shopping, but any even mild complexity in a text, like long-running context (necessary for consistent translation of terminology), puns, purposeful ambiguity, etc., MTL is completely unable to cope with. It just doesn't work and it will likely never work.
- amunozo 3mo agoThis has been said for ages and, as a person in a very multilingual environment, I still cannot see it happening, no matter how good the translations are. I may be wrong, but talking through translation earbuds seems dystopic and uncomfortable.
- yulker 3mo agothere's also no substitute for the reduced inferential distance when two people speak the same language. the literal meaning of words encodes just a subset of the communication
- Thraway198 3mo agobut for people in unilingual environments, this tech seems like a miracle
- amunozo 3mo agoIt is definitely something miraculous, but still not the real thing.
- aiisjustanif 3mo ago> Once this tool becomes adopted enough societally, the learning of foreign languages is going to become a very niche hobby. That could a long time or it could be a very different implementation than the one you describe. Half of the world knowing 2 or more languages and that has been growing over time. I don’t see the evidence that technology will soon close the gap of speaking and understanding another language when in comes to communicating with family, music, business, participating in community events, volunteering, or even intimacy.
- drtgh 3mo ago> China at least has begun cutting foreign-language programs because such AI translation is seen as the way of future. Once this tool becomes adopted enough societally, the learning of foreign languages is going to become a very niche hobby. If this happens, professional or reliable translations will only be accessible to those who can afford/pay them, leaving everyone else stuck with the errors produced by LLMs. To use machine translation, one have to know the language to review the output; otherwise, you're doomed to mistakes. Whatever you do with LLMs, the same thing will happen. I would name all the marketing surrounding the A"I" as the LLM's blindness virus, or something similar.
- slim 3mo agopeople learn by trial and error. ai output can be 50% accurate. it is still useful
- inigyou 3mo agoYour half third words every wrong me is paperclip understandable. (When half of words are wrong it is not understandable.)
- Thraway198 3mo agoNah it'll be the same progression as llms.
- feverzsj 3mo agoChina does this, because significant amount of foreign companies have left or plan to leave China.
- wibr 3mo agoEven if the translation is perfect and "real-time", it comes with a significant latency that will make any conversation less natural. Good for some situations while traveling, not something you would want to rely on for everyday life.
- paulsutter 3mo agoWith AI there will always be people who learn more, faster using AI. And there will be people who use AI to avoid learning. When moving abroad, I hope folks will do the former (and the latter as tourists). When I move back to Japan I'll wear something like Even Realities glasses, and when unknown vocabulary gets used, display that. Personally I think this will help me learn better than before. But let's wait and see! I'm very hopeful about learning-acceleration tools. Just think what will be possible with Neuralink.
- m0llusk 3mo agoThat seems like saying weightlifting is pointless because we have robots for lifting and moving things around. But lifting weights can improve health and lifespan. It may also be that thinking in another language is different from merely translating because of the idioms and cultural norms and references involved.
- supertrope 3mo agoMass market GPS navigation devices haven't made learning how to navigate a city like a local obsolete. If you've ever seen a gig economy driver get lost despite having step by step instructions...