[lg policy] Re: Any thoughts on language policy in a world of instant automated translation?

[Dave Sayers]

Aha! No sooner had I sent this than a new in-ear live translation gadget was announced!
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/mymanu-clik-mwc-2017/

Dave

--
Dr. Dave Sayers, ORCID no. 0000-0003-1124-7132
Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University | www.shu.ac.uk
Honorary Research Fellow, Cardiff University & WISERD | www.wiserd.ac.uk
dave.sayers at cantab.net | http://shu.academia.edu/DaveSayers


On 02/03/2017 10:36, Dave Sayers wrote:
> 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. https://youtu.be/dPYgexVJ0jQ,
> https://youtu.be/3Vi4s4KsyPk?t=2m30s.
>
> The Google Translate app has similar functionality, e.g. https://youtu.be/nHUizVXnUSo.
>
> 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. https://goo.gl/Nr9SWE, https://goo.gl/pkKJ7f.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> What do we think, lgpolicy folk?
>
> Dave
>
> --
> Dr. Dave Sayers, ORCID no. 0000-0003-1124-7132
> Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University | www.shu.ac.uk
> Honorary Research Fellow, Cardiff University & WISERD | www.wiserd.ac.uk
> dave.sayers at cantab.net | http://shu.academia.edu/DaveSayers
>

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