Machine Translation and the Future of Local Languages
Jonggab Kim · 영미문학교육 · 2017
The recent remarkable development of machine translation raises our expectation that we can communicate without worrying about the language barriers. Such a dream in the past was considered absurd, but now its evolution into the one mounted with neural networks will make it come true soon. Beginning with the question what will happen to local languages if perfected machine translation does away with the language barriers, this paper ends with the conclusion that the present local languages, estimated from 2,500 to 3,500 in number, will be reduced into one, or few, standardized language(s). The death of local languages is caused by their very nature. If language is the vehicle of communication, the fact is the vehicle itself is not communicable. The raison d’ere of machine translation lies in overcoming the materiality of vehicle so that communication becomes transparent. It is needless to say that the ideal of communication is to send message without noise. What does it mean if it is not communication without language medium? Then the fact that now the most common computer language is English has an uttermost significance. The chances are English will become computer language, while losing its materiality.