[TFNA]

Sadly, this beneficial activity doesn’t look promising in the longterm. Real-time interpretation of foreign languages through earbuds is already available in its nascent phase, and China at least has begun cutting foreign-language programmes at its unis because such AI translation is seen as the way of future. Once this tool becomes adopted enough societally, the learning of foreign languages is going to become a very niche hobby. It’s already becoming a niche hobby when many developed-country Gen Z are content with traveling and working abroad with only a knowledge of English alongside their native language.

[asveikau]

I think any multilingual person will be skeptical of your analysis. Translation is not a substitute for understanding the original. It's good that we have translations, but it isn't the same. As you get into consuming art, literature, poetry, commentary, this is relevant.

[mcswell]

1) But for many people and in many situations, translation---including MT---is good enough. And that overcomes any perceived need to learn another language (which learning may be in opposition to learning something else, something perceived as more important).

2) Most people don't "consume" literature or poetry, and it's unclear to me that non-performance art requires language. (I appreciate Rennaissance painting, but apart from the occasional Latin writing I don't need language to understand it.)

Disclaimer: Besides English, I'm reasonably fluent in Spanish (more so 35 years ago when I last lived in a Spanish speaking country), and used to be reasonably fluent in German, French, Tzeltal and Shuar (and a bit of Italian and written classical Greek). So I have every reason to hope this study is correct. But I have my doubts.

[fluoridation]

Translation is good enough, but quite often no translation exists. MTL is at this point good enough for simple texts and for everyday living like restaurant menus and shopping, but any even mild complexity in a text, like long-running context (necessary for consistent translation of terminology), puns, purposeful ambiguity, etc., MTL is completely unable to cope with. It just doesn't work and it will likely never work.

[TFNA]

Learning a foreign language in order to get more out of art, literature, or poetry is already a very niche hobby and one risks being accused of snobbism or privilege for suggesting it. Art, literature (of the kind where learning the original language could be important), and poetry themselves are niche hobbies.

[asveikau]

I don't know your history, but this sounds like a monolingual person not understanding and being arrogant about it. It's not a niche hobby if that's literally your life. Many people are not multilingual as a hobby, or as a choice.

[tekno45]

they think art is a niche hobby and not the basis of human culture. I wouldn't listen too intently to them.

[TFNA]

Art is perennial and omnipresent in human societies, but the sort of art that operates through a language foreign to the aficionado’s own, and learning that language would be beneficial to appreciation of it, is obviously going to be a niche subset of art.

[tekno45]

basic puns and rhyming are niche forms of art?

[TFNA]

Did you not notice that I specified “developed-country Gen Z above” and also China? That was to leave a carve-out for the still very vibrant everyday multilingualism of the Indian Subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa, etc. But for East Asia, Europe and most of Latin America, the trends speak for themselves. I am not monolingual, nor are many educated people of my generation, but younger people in my country are likely to learn only English alongside their native language (and then stop being curious).

[estebank]

Someone who can speak English on top of their mother tongue is already multilingual. Anecdotally, people who live anywhere close to a border in Europe tends to speak at least two languages, often more than two, regardless of class or profession.

In Latin America, most countries speak Spanish (with the obvious exception of Brazil and smaller colonies from the other European countries), so the every day pressure to learn another language isn't there and English becomes the "obvious" choice. I don't quite get why you seem to discount English entirely.

There's always been a Lingua Franca. It hasn't always been the same one. There will likely always be one.

[fer]

Culture is not only art. An LLM won't help you naturally drop you a "cuidao chacho que toy mu loco" nor "в жёлтом доме по тебе скучают", nor will it translate it into something that carries the exact meaning to you in English, nor reference any equivalent cultural element, for the foreseeable future. You'll need embeddings common life experiences, and even intonation can completely change the meaning even retaining the emphasis.

It will help you communicate, but not partake.

[pebble]

Let me tell you about a little thing called kpop. Korean language courses are booming.

[Thraway198]

The AI will be able to do all that for you. What you're touching on is the difference between comprehension vs merely being a vessel for information.

[asveikau]

I'll give you a very simple example I saw recently. I saw a dad joke in Spanish on social media and it gave me a chuckle. It was a comment to a lawyer's video and it translates to "can I study law if I'm a leftie?" It relies on the fact that law is also a word for "right".

AI won't be able to succinctly translate that joke and have it hit the same way. As an experiment I just fed that into ChatGPT, and it did explain the pun in 6 paragraphs with quotations and a bulleted list, but that kills the simplicity of the humor.

[mcswell]

I once saw a political cartoon that said "No votar basura." It played on the homophony between 'votar' = "to vote" and 'botar' = "to throw out."

That said, there are plenty of jokes in English. Stop me if you've heard this one...

[Thraway198]

It can't now. It will be able to in the future, when the translation actually becomes fluent for the user.

[asveikau]

My point is that a succinct and correct translation for the pun does not exist in the target language.

[Thraway198]

My point is that the AI will have that info understood as part of "being a translator," and react accordingly. The phenomenon you're describing is a basic fact of linguistics. Many things don't have direct translations, but they are still translated by fluent speakers of both languages.

[aiisjustanif]

> Once this tool becomes adopted enough societally, the learning of foreign languages is going to become a very niche hobby.

That could a long time or it could be a very different implementation than the one you describe. Half of the world knowing 2 or more languages and that has been growing over time. I don’t see the evidence that technology will soon close the gap of speaking and understanding another language when in comes to communicating with family, music, business, participating in community events, volunteering, or even intimacy.

[wibr]

Even if the translation is perfect and "real-time", it comes with a significant latency that will make any conversation less natural. Good for some situations while traveling, not something you would want to rely on for everyday life.

[m0llusk]

That seems like saying weightlifting is pointless because we have robots for lifting and moving things around. But lifting weights can improve health and lifespan. It may also be that thinking in another language is different from merely translating because of the idioms and cultural norms and references involved.

[drtgh]

> China at least has begun cutting foreign-language programs because such AI translation is seen as the way of future. Once this tool becomes adopted enough societally, the learning of foreign languages is going to become a very niche hobby.

If this happens, professional or reliable translations will only be accessible to those who can afford/pay them, leaving everyone else stuck with the errors produced by LLMs.

To use machine translation, one have to know the language to review the output; otherwise, you're doomed to mistakes. Whatever you do with LLMs, the same thing will happen.

I would name all the marketing surrounding the A"I" as the LLM's blindness virus, or something similar.

[Thraway198]

Nah it'll be the same progression as llms.

[slim]

people learn by trial and error. ai output can be 50% accurate. it is still useful

[inigyou]

Your half third words every wrong me is paperclip understandable.

(When half of words are wrong it is not understandable.)

[amunozo]

This has been said for ages and, as a person in a very multilingual environment, I still cannot see it happening, no matter how good the translations are. I may be wrong, but talking through translation earbuds seems dystopic and uncomfortable.

[yulker]

there's also no substitute for the reduced inferential distance when two people speak the same language. the literal meaning of words encodes just a subset of the communication

[Thraway198]

but for people in unilingual environments, this tech seems like a miracle

[amunozo]

It is definitely something miraculous, but still not the real thing.

[paulsutter]

With AI there will always be people who learn more, faster using AI. And there will be people who use AI to avoid learning. When moving abroad, I hope folks will do the former (and the latter as tourists).

When I move back to Japan I'll wear something like Even Realities glasses, and when unknown vocabulary gets used, display that. Personally I think this will help me learn better than before. But let's wait and see!

I'm very hopeful about learning-acceleration tools. Just think what will be possible with Neuralink.

[supertrope]

Mass market GPS navigation devices haven't made learning how to navigate a city like a local obsolete. If you've ever seen a gig economy driver get lost despite having step by step instructions...

[feverzsj]

China does this, because significant amount of foreign companies have left or plan to leave China.