Translate Tools Helping Or Harming?

With Google Translate available on all our devices, technology has been breaking language barriers in real time. What does this entail for the future of culture and communication?

The most significant difference between cultures is language, and it can be a struggle for tourists when visiting a new place. With a myriad of devices that help translate, it makes a big difference and allows travellers to communicate with locals.

The days of scrolling through a phrase book are over. Our phones are here to save the day. During the World Cup in Russia, there was a 30% rise in the use of the Google Translate app, with the most popular searches seen as beer, world cup, and stadium.

One of the main reasons behind translations apps and devices is to improve natural language processing, which in turn means the way that computers understand what humans write and say. The more data a computer has on it, the better it can match patterns that we process as speech.

Some people however believe that such translations lack the soul of a language as well as the culture around it. We may be able to communicate with different cultures due to devices, however we are not truly connecting.

In fact, culture differences stand out even more when we hide ourselves within our own culture and only venture out digitally.

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