[nisa]

It's not personal but I can't help myself to think that's such a sad post here. Reducing learning a different culture through language by plugging in an earbud. Is the battery is gone or your phone is stolen you realize you can't automate anything and that you've learned nothing. It's not about the tech if it works it's amazing it's like babelfish but it's so shallow to assume everything has some direct and simple "value" that can be replaced by some machine or even better some paid service. It's so common here. Is this an US thing?

[caymanjim]

I think it'll greatly increase cultural learning, by increasing the opportunity to interact with people. I've traveled to a lot of countries, and never learned more than a handful of words in each, primarily related to basic service interactions. I enjoyed talking to locals when they spoke English. I couldn't interact in any meaningful way with the vast majority of people, though.

Learning languages is great. If you can become fluent in two that's impressive. Even simple conversational ability in a few languages is impressive. But it's a big world.

[nisa]

Thanks. Wonderful take and optimistic. You are correct I think.

[iambateman]

I think you’re reading a sense of cultural reductionism in my comment that I didn’t intend.

There’s more to learning a culture than the language. And having a real-time translator makes it possible to enjoy a huge range of cultures much more directly than before. The fact is, I’m not going to learn Chinese and Swahili and Japanese. So my choices are to go through a human translator or nothing if I want to talk to those people.

How is it sad that a technology is going to allow me to directly talk to a huge number of people that I never could have before?

[CamperBob2]

It's a much older theme, going all the way back to the Biblical legend of the Tower of Babel (hence the name of the fish.) Like most of that material, the Babel myth was probably stolen from the Babylonians or even older cultures.

The powers that be -- whether gods or governors -- tend to feel threatened when people can communicate freely with each other. Don't join their side.

[nisa]

I think you misunderstood my post. It's wonderful technology and a great aid. I just wanted to say there is so much more to learning a foreign language (and culture) than machine translation - even if almost perfect. At least that was my take away from learning Czech as a German. Lot's of subtle details.