Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 14 submissions in the queue.

English is King but Technology May Trump All

posted by martyb on Sunday January 27 2019, @08:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the You-will-be-assimilated dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

English is currently one of the dominant languages on the planet due to the spread of the US and UK empires in the last century. With the rise of technology English may be made redundant with the advent of automatic language translation.

Just waiting for made up languages to become the norm (e.g. Esperanto), or hyper language learning.

Now ponder, as Douglas Hofstadter did, translating Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky from English into French, German, and Russian (Cyrillic .GIF) or (ASCII transliteration).

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
English is King but Technology May Trump All | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 78 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Sunday January 27 2019, @10:08PM (4 children)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Sunday January 27 2019, @10:08PM (#792758) Journal

    And then you have to trust the translation.

    Any two real-time translators willl not agree, as a substanital part of communication is non-verbal or tonal (hence the need for /sarcasm tags, and the problems with "flat" statements being mis-interpreted, even when the "common" language is English", we can see from SN how this works between the UK, USA and Australia)

    Want to start war? Hack a brain brain translator!

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   2  

  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday January 28 2019, @04:06AM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Monday January 28 2019, @04:06AM (#792864) Homepage Journal

    Lobotomies A Real Estate Developer!

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]

  • (Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday January 28 2019, @12:56PM (2 children)

    by shrewdsheep (5215) on Monday January 28 2019, @12:56PM (#792968)

    It's really called the babelfish. Ever heard of it [wikipedia.org]? Everybody trusts the babelfish. And to the contrary, it even makes the Vogons mellow (make war, not love).

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by kazzie on Monday January 28 2019, @04:36PM (1 child)

      by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @04:36PM (#793071)

      But the Vogons don't make love or war, they make paperwork.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:46PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:46PM (#793533)

        What? Seriously? You don't consider Vogon poetry warfare?
        Pah. What sector are you from anyway?