This Wired column by Clive Anderson is fascinating. What if Google's improved translation features (try them out in Chrome if you're doubtful) unifies the users of the Internet, and everyone can post in their own mother tongue simultaneously, letting automated translation sort it all out?
Certainly, any activity requiring serious precision — legal proceedings, business discussions, diplomatic negotiations — will still need expert human translators. And in the short run, English will probably dominate those fields. But most people don’t need that level of quality to chat with foreign friends or surf the international Web.
At once, I'm thrilled and mildly concerned about the prospect. I think the 10-year-old in me that first got on the Internet would feel the same. When I was that little, the first website I was visited was nintendo.com (I was a big, big fanboy). The second was nintendo.co.jp. I have no doubt that being able to see a little sliver of the Japanese world back then was a big inspiration to go on to learn Japanese later in life. What if I had Google Chrome 15 years ago? Would I have been too lazy to bother wanting to learn Japanese?
Every so often, I start to miss Japanese life and language and need to reconnect with it. I'll crack open a beer and log in to my iTunes Japan account. Last night, I spent an hour checking out what was popular lately, but also just listening to random podcasts about the Japanese music scene. As I put it to Suihan:
I guess the real question is, will the Internet make future generations more internationalized, what with all this translated communication, or will it make them more insular and dependent on their own language and Google translation?i'm at once very happy that i can understand what's being said (thanks to having studied) and relieved that the 'net has developed to the point where i can just jump into the japanese world on demand. they go hand-in-hand