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<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">It can't be long now. In
many ways the technology is already in place. For example Skype
Translator offers automated speech-to-speech translation and is
pretty good according to the user reviews I've seen, e.g.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://youtu.be/dPYgexVJ0jQ">https://youtu.be/dPYgexVJ0jQ</a>, <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://youtu.be/3Vi4s4KsyPk?t=2m30s">https://youtu.be/3Vi4s4KsyPk?t=2m30s</a>.<br>
<br>
The Google Translate app has similar functionality, e.g.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://youtu.be/nHUizVXnUSo">https://youtu.be/nHUizVXnUSo</a>.<br>
<br>
At this point, these services still seem to need fairly careful,
non-overlapping speech, they're not entirely accurate even with
that level of easy input, and they're only available for
particular languages. But there are media reports (perhaps a
little breathless) about the rapid pace of innovation in automated
translation, based on deep learning and AI, e.g.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://goo.gl/Nr9SWE">https://goo.gl/Nr9SWE</a>, <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://goo.gl/pkKJ7f">https://goo.gl/pkKJ7f</a>.<br>
<br>
From the pace of change it seems reasonable to assume that in the
next ten years we'll be in a position where you can have
reasonably fluent conversations using this kind of technology.<br>
<br>
How many languages are included remains an open question, but in
principle it seems this could change a lot of the foundations of
contemporary language policy.<br>
<br>
Among the goals of language policy I think are two broad
overarching ones: to secure the rights of minority language
speakers to be understood, and to promote minority languages as a
valuable source of diversity. Automated translation doesn't really
do anything to the second of these two arguments, but it has the
potential to address the first almost entirely - of course with a
whole raft of assumptions about accessibility of technology and
translation of enough languages.<br>
<br>
What do we think, lgpolicy folk?<br>
<br>
Dave<br>
<br>
--<br>
Dr. Dave Sayers, ORCID no. 0000-0003-1124-7132<br>
Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University |
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.shu.ac.uk">www.shu.ac.uk</a><br>
Honorary Research Fellow, Cardiff University & WISERD |
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.wiserd.ac.uk">www.wiserd.ac.uk</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:dave.sayers@cantab.net">dave.sayers@cantab.net</a> | <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://shu.academia.edu/DaveSayers">http://shu.academia.edu/DaveSayers</a><br>
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