Machine translation and other AI tools are getting more and more powerful. It seems like you can easily communicate in a language you don’t know or know poorly without having to learn it.
But is that really so?
In this post, I’m going to discuss whether it’s really that easy to communicate in a language you don’t know using AI tools and highlight the importance of language learning in the AI era.
Let’s get started!
- Is It Really That Easy?
- Limitations of Machine Translation and AI Tools
- Evaluate the Situation, Adapt, and Adjust
- Language Learning in AI Era
- Final Thoughts
Is It Really That Easy?
Well, it depends on what you call easy, how much you need to communicate in a foreign language, and the results you want to achieve.
Writing a text in your native language and putting it through Google Translate or asking ChatGPT to write you a text in the target language is easy. There are even AIs attached to videoconferencing software that can translate speech on the go.
But consider the following things:
- Machine translation tools are not human (well, duh) and they still can’t do quite a few things that humans can, like understand irony, or non-verbal cues, or interpret certain contexts (more on this below). They are also not one specific human, i.e. not you, and won’t always be able to convey the specific nuances and meanings you want to convey.
- Machine translation tools and AIs also have their own specific limitations. For instance, ChatGPT doesn’t work too well with factual information or mathematics. If you ask it to write a history essay for you, no matter the language, it will most likely be historical fiction.
- Depending on the languages that you need translation to and from, not all AI translation tools will be able to help you or do it well. For instance, I really like DeepL, but it doesn’t include the language of the country I currently live in (Armenia).
- If you have to communicate in a foreign language a lot, each instance of communication will include lots of extra steps, translating your and your counterpart’s speech. And some meaning always gets lost in translation. This is, unfortunately, a general limitation of translation, human translation included, which can only be minimized if you hire the best synchronized interpreters, which will be incredibly pricey.
Let’s take a more detailed look at some limitations of AI tools.
Limitations of Machine Translation and AI Tools
AI tools are getting better every day (if not every hour), but there are still certain limitations to them that haven’t been overcome yet.
Here are a few examples*:
- Machine translation often lacks the ability to understand and interpret nuances, idioms, and cultural references in a language.
- AI currently cannot match humans in terms of emotional intelligence. When learning a language, we learn to interpret tone, mood, and emotions – something that machine translation struggles with.
- Machines can struggle with homonyms and context-based meanings. Human translators or language learners are better at understanding words based on the context of the conversation.
- Languages constantly evolve, with new slang, idioms, and phrases being added regularly. While AI can be updated, it might not keep up with the rapid pace of language evolution.
- Learning a language exposes people to new cultures, ideas, and ways of thinking. This cultural understanding is something that machine translation cannot provide.
- When it comes to translating oral speech, AI often struggles with recognizing and replicating various accents and pronunciations. It also struggles a lot with accurately recognizing speech in noisy environments.
- A lot of communication is non-verbal or expressed in very subtle cues that machine translation tools cannot handle. They also struggle with accurately conveying emotional expression.
*Disclaimer: This list has been written with the help of ChatGPT, which, I know, is kind of ironic – but I’ve never denied that it is a very helpful tool. However, in this case, I know both the language and the subject well, and I could easily proofread, edit, and fact-check the output.
So, does this mean that you shouldn’t use translation technology? Not at all! But you need to be smart about it, too.
Evaluate the Situation, Adapt, and Adjust
Unfortunately, there is no common answer and no one-size-fits-all recipe here.
In many situations, machine translation will be perfectly enough. It’s quick, it’s cheap, it works quite well with fairly simple and straightforward texts. If you are translating something just for your own understanding, or if the communication situation is fairly casual and informal, you probably won’t need anything else.
Just be transparent and honest. If you are communicating with someone using AI tools, tell them that – it’s not just honest but will help clear the situation if any misunderstanding occurs.
In other cases, you may absolutely need a human translator or interpreter, if you don’t know the target language well yourself. Think of highly sensitive documents or high-level business or political meetings – when translating these, accuracy is of the utmost importance, and privacy can be an issue too, which not all AI tools can provide.
If you have to constantly interact with a language on different levels and in different situations, it may be a good idea to invest some time, money, and effort in learning it. It will take a while, but will ultimately make communication in this language much more comfortable for you and save time and money on translation as well.
This doesn’t mean that you have to give up AI translation tools – they can still be of great help, and you can use them as learning tools, too.
Language Learning in AI Era
There are a lot of reasons for learning a language that AIs just can’t cover.
Moving to a different country, communicating and building relationships with people worldwide, understanding the rich culture that a language is a part of – to truly do and appreciate this, you need to learn the language.
Again, machine translation tools can be very helpful to you in the process, but the idea is to use them as learning tools and not as tools to replace your own learning.
Learning languages is also a really fun hobby and extremely good for your brain – so why would you pass up on that?
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, it’s up to you, whether you want to learn a language, hire a translator, or use machine translation. However, the importance and the benefits of language learning remain high even in the era of AI tools.
Thank you so much for reading! Do you use any machine translation tools? Are you learning any languages? Share in the comments, let’s continue the discussion!
Julia Sol Studio 
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