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Every two weeks, another language goes extinct.
Could translation devices save them?
One thing we have to understand about communication is that messages don't really travel, they
code.
Take a look at this model.
First, you have to encode the message - like in a language. And then it has to travel through
some channel - such as the airwaves. Then it has to be received and then decoded.
That means there's a lot of places where communication can get a little mucked up.
Now I wonder if our progress has allowed us to communicate more effectively.
After all, since the printing press we've gone all the way to the smartphone, with lots
of communication revolutions along the way.
So, what's next?
Well what about translation devices that allow people to communicate across language barriers.
Here's how it would work.
You're in a foreign country and you want to greet a local. You speak into a device, like
a mobile phone, and speech recognition software digitizes the sound and uses statistical algorithms
to guess what was said.
The algorithm also takes context into account, so that the relationship of words affects
the computer's guess.
During the translation phase, an algorithm compares your words and phrases to troves
of translated documents and webpages from the local language and makes another guess
at the translation.
It then uses a library of speech sounds to produce your sentence in the local language.
Real-time translation already exists for your personal device. For example, Word Lens is
an app that has optical word recognition software.
And Google is working on prototypes of hardware that can do real-time translation in controlled
environments.
And the giant telecom NTT DoCoMo has created augmented reality glasses that can take words
on signs and menus, and translate them in near real-time.
Now real-time translation wouldn't just be useful when you're in Bora Bora and need to
ask someone the way to the bathroom. Preserving linguistic differences can benefit us in lots
of ways.
For example, we can learn what aspects of language are universal, as opposed to peculiar
to a specific language.
But there are some incredible similarities between human language, and the languages
of dolphins and whales.
Now this suggests that there are some elements of language that are universal across species.
So the question is - is this just restricted to Earth's species?
Well, maybe in the future we'll have access to something like the Babel Fish from The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was a little fish that you would shove into your
auditory canal and it would actually excrete translated alien languages directly into your
brain.
But whether it's communicating with aliens or animals or humans, there are some things
that are always gonna be lost in translation.
Now here we're talking about noise. Not just literal noise, which can interfere with communication,
but psychological factors, like assumptions that we make about a person based upon their
life experiences right when we get into a conversation, that can impede real communication.
There are so many different ways communication can go haywire, frankly I'm surprised we ever
managed to communicate in the first place.
And some things are impossible to communicate. For example, the feeling you get when you
listen to Mozart, or when you wake up from a bad dream, or how it feels to fall in love.
But that doesn't stop us from trying.
I've got a question for all of you. What application can you imagine for real-time translation
devices?
Let us know in the comments below.
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