<
https://theconversation.com/your-united-states-was-normal-has-translation-tech-really-made-language-learning-redundant-217665>
"Every day, millions of people start the day by posting a greeting on social
media. None of them expect to be arrested for their friendly morning ritual.
But that’s exactly what happened to a Palestinian construction worker in 2017,
when the caption “يصبحهم” (“good morning”) on his Facebook selfie was
auto-translated as “attack them.”
A human Arabic speaker would have immediately recognized “يصبحهم” as an
informal way to say “good morning”. Not so AI. Machines are notoriously bad at
dealing with variation, a key characteristic of all human languages.
With recent advances in automated translation, the belief is taking hold that
humans, particularly English speakers, no longer need to learn other languages.
Why bother with the effort when Google Translate and a host of other apps can
do it for us?
In fact, some Anglophone universities are making precisely this argument to
dismantle their language programs.
Unfortunately, language technologies are nowhere near being able to replace
human language skills and will not be able to do so in the foreseeable future
because machine language learning and human language learning differ in
fundamental ways."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
