3 A future with machine translation

A future with machine translation. It’s easy to worry that machine translation might take away the pleasure and purpose of language learning. But to understand what machine translation means for us and how we might use it, let’s start at the beginning and ask: what first made you want to learn a language? Maybe you loved a certain culture, or maybe you just wanted to train your little grey cells. Whatever the goal, machine translation can definitely help, but it definitely can’t learn for you.

In language teaching, we talk about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. An external reward is extrinsic, whereas an internal desire is intrinsic. So let’s say you want to get from Luang Prabang to Phonsavan in Northern Laos. This is an extrinsic motivation. There is no need to learn to speak Lao. You may as well just use an app. But what if you fall in love with the beautiful country of Laos? This is an intrinsic motivation. Suddenly, it makes better sense to learn the language and connect with the people and culture.

Now for a little philosophy. What makes us human? Well, one answer is our ability to use tools but not our ability to let those tools use or dominate us. So the best path is to use machine translation strategically, choosing when and how we want to use it.

This course has taught you about machine translation, about plagiarism and good academic conduct, and about the future of artificial intelligence. Now it’s time to reflect, to consider why you’re learning a language in the first place so you can make informed decisions about how you use machine translation and AI tools.