Communicating with one, but yet many, languages

It was not very many years ago that the media emphasized the need to teach your children Chinese or Russian if they were to succeed in the future. Being able to communicate, fluently, with many languages has for a long time been one of the key skills for those who have high aspirations for their career

Recently there are some hints that things might be changing. Actually, in the future world, you might not need to know any language other than your own. This trend is called the collapse of language learning.  This trend is largely due to the advancements in technology.

“Artificial real-time language translators will develop further and with the help of them, we will be able to  communicate with others even when we do not speak or write the same language,” says Marianna Mäki-Teeri, Senior Manager and Foresight Analyst of Futures Platform. “If this becomes reality, it might cause a drop in motivation to study foreign languages.”

As every trend, this one has positive and negative consequences. Let’s start with the negative ones.

First, language learning is not just about language. Research has shown that versatile language skills are related to complex thought processes, which have advantages for an individual’s brain activity. These advantages include increased learning capacity and creativity, decreased mental volatility, improved general communication skills, and less age-related memory problems.

Second, the development of artificial translators might further weaken the status of lesser known languages.

“The technology advances faster with languages which have many speakers: The technology learns what it is fed to. This affects the hierarchy of languages,” Mäki-Teeri explains. “But at the same time as some lesser spoken languages may die, whole new languages may spring up. Think about coding, it is a language as well.”

Third, as every language teacher knows, learning a language means also learning about a culture. Each language has words which just cannot be translated without losing their true meaning. These nuances of languages are important in understanding different cultures. If they are lost, will the real, deep understanding of cultures suffer?

Maybe not, because there are lots of positive aspects in this trend too. With the help of artificial translators, people might be able to get to know people from other cultures and get a glimpse of their world without a need to dedicate years to the study of a foreign language – a task that is anyway lost for most of us after our teenage years due to the lack of time and money.

It could also be that when the actual need to learn foreign languages decreases, learning them might take off as a hobby. It could actually become popular to learn a language and get to know cultures. We may even see a boom of language related after-school clubs!

Effective artificial translators most likely would have a massive impact in the media, education and in labour markets. With accurate translations people could follow news and media much more widely than currently is possible. This is incredible as people would not be limited to media published in the language they know or even to the media of one specific country. Globalisation of labour markets would probably increase further, since whole new professions would open up for people who could do certain tasks with the help of artificial translators for companies in the other side of the world.

Where does education fit in in all this? Artificial translators together with advances in remote teaching could have a huge effect on how information is shared. In the future, students might be able to join classes all over the world and study with diverse groups of pupils from different cultures. So, instead of pushing us apart, collapse of language learning might as well bring us more together.

Writer: Kati Melto, Head of Marketing and Communications, Education House Finland. 

This blog is a collaboration with Education House Finland and Futures Platform.