Machine Translation

Periodically I like to become a little more fluent in French, by reading online papers or listening to news and movies on the internet. That’s a lot easier than when I first learned the language in the 60s _ all we could listen to then were a few spoken vinyl records

A different language gives me a different perspective on life, not least because it immerses me in an alternate culture, with all its slightly odd values and constructions. I’m no great linguist, but I find it a refreshing and infinitely interesting mental exercise.

All that continues personally, even as I have seen machine translation _ one form of AI _become commonly freely available. I know I can push a button and have text rendered in English. Soon, no doubt, I will be able to get real time spoken dialogue.

But I do not. 

Certainly, if I needed something from a Chinese or Arabic source, I would push that button and be very grateful. If I had a tedious job explaining French news to my boss I’d be happy for the help.

But I still enjoy the different brain gymnastics and the sense of mastery when I do it myself. My guess is something similar will eventually become standard in writing and other intellectual tasks.