[version_five]

> 10 years when I visit China I could probably have an in-depth conversation without ever knowing Chinese

Doubt it. When you learn a language you learn a lot more than the translation, you learn thinking and connotations that require a broader understanding that never get captured regardless of the translation quality, because they require knowing history and seeing previous uses in context that can't be captured in the translation.

"Good" translation will do for language what wikipedia has done for knowledge. Everyone will get a superficial understanding, some will pretend that reading off a definitions is the same as actually knowing something, and the world will get a lot more shallow, empty conversations.

[realusername]

All of that does not matter for just communicating, even for the languages where google translate is terrible, it's already equivalent to a B2 level which is enough for communicating about everything.

In some languages, DeepL has near perfect translation to the point you cannot really tell if it was translated.