Yet another reason to study foreign languages

Making the most of machine translation

J.C. Leyendecker The Phrase Book (1917)

Years ago, when I lived in Japan, I asked the child of a Japanese mother and American father about the languages she spoke. When I inquired in English, the six-year old denied any ability to speak Japanese. When, however, I spoke to her in Japanese, she answered in Japanese.

Earlier this week, I conducted, via Zoom, a decision-forcing case for a group of military officers in Denmark. Before the exercise began, listening to the random conversations of the participants reminded me of my inability to comprehend the spoken version of the native tongue of Hans Christian Anderson. I was able pick out the occasional word, but could not do a proper job of eavesdropping.

Comparing these two experiences reminds me that people who learn a language acquire a mix of knowledge and skill, understanding and ability, savoir and savoir faire. In the case of children, who pickup phrases, expressions, and implicit rules from parents and playmates, this combination leans heavily towards practice. In the case of adults, who engage idioms with the help of grammars and other descriptive materials, it contains a great deal of theory.

As I was so recently reminded, I cannot comprehend spoken Danish. Nonetheless, I know a little about the unusual way that language handles numbers between fifty and ninety-nine. (According to that “vigesimal” scheme, “50” is spoken as halvtreds, an abbreviation for a longer expression that means “three times twenty minus half of twenty.”) Such knowledge, in turn, preserves me from surprise whenever I encounter different ways to describe numerals.

Machine translations, such as those provided by services such as Google Translate, can serve as a substitute for skill. That is to say, they do things that, until a few years ago, required the services of a competent human translator. They cannot, however, provide people with the knowledge they need to make full use of their services, and, in particular, to realize when they are making mistakes.

At present, the many paths to the understanding needed to make the most of machine translation all run through the serious study of the speech of strangers. This is not to say that you need to know a great deal about the language being translated. While such knowledge is, of course, helpful, it is less important than experience of several different ways to communicate a given idea.

Recommendation: Now in its eleventh year, The History of English Podcast provides listeners with an excellent introduction, not merely to the evolution of the English language, but to the nature of language in general. As such, it offers a solid foundation for the subsequent study of foreign languages. (To get the most from this program, begin at the beginning.)