Will AI translation make learning a new language pointless? Experts weight in as Google, Samsung, ChatGPT spur ‘giant strides’ in technology
- Speech translation apps are improving, and while there are still limits to the AI-powered technology, experts say big advances are on the horizon
- The goal for apps is real-time speech-to-speech translation. Linguists weigh in on the impact this would have on language learning were it to be achieved
When the protagonist in the British cult sci-fi novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sticks a creature called a Babel fish in his ear, it translates all alien speech for him. Can artificial intelligence (AI) give us something similar?
Thanks to advances in machine learning, says Anatol Stefanowitsch, a linguist and professor at the Free University of Berlin, in Germany, we already have simultaneous speech translation systems that could make the arduous work of learning a foreign language obsolete.
Computer-based speech recognition and translation have become good enough for many everyday purposes, he points out, and modern smartphones often have a speech translator app installed on them.
The goal is machine translation of speech in real time, that is, with as little delay as possible.
The technological prerequisites for this now exist, says the Goethe-Institut. Experts at the German cultural association, which promotes cultural exchange and study of the German language abroad, distinguish between translating one language into another and foreign language proficiency, the latter going “far beyond simple simultaneous translation”.