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The future of Esperanto

Evildela :lta, 12. huhtikuuta 2012

Viestejä: 18

Kieli: English

Evildela (Näytä profiilli) 12. huhtikuuta 2012 23.55.22

With the internet Esperanto has boomed, but is it short term? Recently I've been reading articles, and watching films based on future technologies. And it's predicted within 50 years we will have automatic translation services on our glasses, languages will nolonger be a problem, it will than come to a point where you won't even realise someone is speaking a foreign language. So what does this mean for Esperanto? Alot of Esperantists will just say, oh that technology is far off, but it will without doubt be here within this century, my children as adults will own this technology. So I love Esperanto but I fear that we as a movement need to redefine ourselves, otherwise Esperanto will not survive.

What’s everyone else think? What do you think the future of Esperanto will be?

omid17 (Näytä profiilli) 13. huhtikuuta 2012 0.33.07

No matter how sophisticated, computer-aided translation can not cover all the slang forms and nuances in languages; and in my opinion it's not coming soon at all. But even then, national languages would still play an important role. It is not just communication, common language creates rapport between their speakers. When you speak English with an Australian accent to a fellow citizen it doesn't feel the same when talking to a foreigner with a more international style of pronunciation. Of course in both cases, you communicate with no difficulty. Can this machine translation include mimicking regional dialects and their special pronunciations too? That would make the software bulky and expensive and the task too tiresome, but I agree that it's not impossible. The whole real-time precise translation thing would be a major leap for mankind.

As for Esperanto, I think it will be a great blow for the finvenkistoj, but as long as EO consists of a small community of people who want to make good friends by beautiful traditions such as pasporta servo and support peace and understanding among the people, it will survive. Other than that, Esperanto is a living language, with a bulk of literature and a number of speakers, so when technology advances to a degree when the idea of an International language will be a moot point, it would still be a living language like the rest of the spoken languages with some tradition attached to it.

Evildela (Näytä profiilli) 13. huhtikuuta 2012 1.35.29

You make some good points, and I do hope it survives this transition, but I work in IT and as anyone in It knows, computer technology doubles in power pretty much every eight months, than that combined with a powerful version of Google’s mass translation crusher, would easily be able to combine, every dialect, slang, and even learn from us on the go, into an effective translation system. This system would quickly work with all the European languages, I think it would take alot longer to be effective with the eastern to western languages, but that would be covered quickly due to the markets running between the two countries. I think Esperanto will survive this transition, but I hope it's still as a living language. As most of the languages of the future will have died out and be only studied by specialists researching the past.

Anyways thank you for your input ridulo.gif

opalo (Näytä profiilli) 13. huhtikuuta 2012 4.35.13

Evildela:And it's predicted within 50 years we will have automatic translation services on our glasses, languages will nolonger be a problem, it will than come to a point where you won't even realise someone is speaking a foreign language.
They were predicting the imminent arrival of translating machines 50 years ago. In fact that was one reason that was always given for not bothering with Esperanto. Needless to say, no translating machines for the masses turned up until Google Translate, which in the year 2012 actually produces worse output than some of the programs from the 1970s.

Any kind of decent translation requires human-level intelligence. If computers achieve that then Esperanto is the last thing you will be worried about.

Demian (Näytä profiilli) 13. huhtikuuta 2012 5.23.25

Evildela:Recently I've been reading articles, and watching films based on future technologies. And it's predicted within 50 years we will have automatic translation services...
I haven't read Chomsky's theories thoroughly. But from what I have gathered by superficial reading is that he believes (and his theories have held water for more than half a century now) that language is something innate. It's embedded into us/

I don't know what the current situation is but if that theory turns out to be universally accepted (there are still critics but I think they only form a mintority), it would be interesting to see how "innateness" will be introduced to machines.

Will technology have advanced sufficiently in next 50 years to accomplish this task? I don't know.

vejktoro (Näytä profiilli) 13. huhtikuuta 2012 5.50.14

I'm gonna talk to everybody in Esperanto and they can read whatever they please in their fancy spectacles.

hebda999 (Näytä profiilli) 13. huhtikuuta 2012 6.03.35

Good machine translation requires artificial intelligence. Without it the output is miserable. I do not fear. Sooner English will be replaced by Chinese - it is happening now.

darkweasel (Näytä profiilli) 13. huhtikuuta 2012 6.22.37

Demian:
I don't know what the current situation is but if that theory turns out to be universally accepted (there are still critics but I think they only form a mintority)
I don’t know about the majority of linguists, but during my research for the thesis about language acquisition I wrote for my final exam at high school I found out that there are many problems with Chomsky’s theories.

Demian (Näytä profiilli) 13. huhtikuuta 2012 6.35.17

darkweasel:...during my research for the thesis about language acquisition I wrote for my final exam at high school I found out that there are many problems with Chomsky’s theories.
I am not aware of any serious piece of evidence against the theory. But again, I am not sure for I don't what the theory exactly says, what the consequences are and so on.

In any case, may I ask you what gaps did you find in the theory when you wrote the report? Meanwhile I will try read more about the theory, this time in a little detail.

darkweasel (Näytä profiilli) 13. huhtikuuta 2012 6.51.55

Demian:
darkweasel:...during my research for the thesis about language acquisition I wrote for my final exam at high school I found out that there are many problems with Chomsky’s theories.
I am not aware of any serious piece of evidence against the theory. But again, I am not sure for I don't what the theory exactly says, what the consequences are and so on.

In any case, may I ask you what gaps did you find in the theory when you wrote the report? Meanwhile I will try read more about the theory, this time in a little detail.
Wikipedia has some information in its Universal grammar article. If I find time for that later, I might translate here what I wrote in my report.

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