Saturday, March 6, 2021

Automatic translation and bilingualism

Ymddiheuraf am unrhyw drosedd y gallai'r ddelwedd hon ei hachosi.
Some of us are getting used to seeing automatic translation offered in various platforms. Google Translate has helped with communication in many and varied settings, not least the mobile app version. Facebook and Twitter will offer to translate posts. Microsoft have integrated automatic translation into their Office365 email. Simultaneous automatic translation is available to viewers of Office365 PowerPoint Online presentations. This is easier for the 'Tech Giants' with massive development budgets and a global, multilingual, market. For lesser firms, the impetus, funds and rationale may be less substantial to the point that automatic translation will just have to wait.
And why not? I will come back to this. First I must add that I do think of this post and the matters discussed within it in terms of networked learning but I will leave the reasons for that implicit for now.