Technology and language
Communicating with technology[edit | edit source]
Technology is one of the biggest changes there has been in human communication during the course of history. It has both enabled global communication at a speed that has never happened before, allowing people from various linguistic and cultural contexts to communicate with ease, and created countless new contexts for language use, such as texting. Language technology, how we can make technology understand us and vice versa are also new domains.
Communicating through technology[edit | edit source]
Human interaction has changed with technological advances. Especially with written word such as texting and social media, languages have a tendency to be simplified in order to lessen the effort required. The effect is of course familiar from spoken language as well (e.g., phonetic erosion in frequently used constructions), but written language allows for the language to be simplified into something that would not be done in spoken language (e.g., English abbreviations like LOL or IDK). When written language gets colloquialized and/or more relaxed, it can easily create whole new domains of use, and for example sociolinguistic differences can be detected in how different people communicate via texting.[1][2]
Technology for communication also includes tools like speech synthesis and speech recognition.
Translation[edit | edit source]
In terms of multilingual communication, modern technology allows for fast translation between speakers of different languages. Technologies and services like Google Translate are available for a large part of the human population, and online dictionaries offer increasingly better content. While rapid translation is not perfect in terms of speed or reliability, scientists theorize that in the future technology will become increasingly invisible in real life communicating, offering more seamless and natural communication.[2]
Problems to be solved[edit | edit source]
Written text does not offer all the information spoken language does. With expressions and the tone of voice missing, misinterpretation becomes easier. Phenomena like emojis are on their part filling this gap, but technology has a long way to come before reaching the same level of informativeness in terms of emotion and intentions of everyday speech.
Similarly, machine translation leaves questions for the users of the technology to answer, the most obvious being, how far can we rely on the correctness of the translation. Euphemisms, proverbs and similar phenomena are more difficult to translate correctly and rather than translate the words, the ideal would be to translate meaning. This is not always simple, and even less simple it becomes with smaller or less used languages. Smaller languages that have not had as much development in technological contexts are not in an equal position.
Communicating to technology[edit | edit source]
Communicating to technology involves humans talking to machines in order to get them to perform different tasks. These can include for example chatbots for customer service and AIs in phones and computers (e.g., Siri from Apple or Alexa from Amazon). The future goal is to be able to engage in a natural, complex conversation with machines.[2]
Future challenges[edit | edit source]
With technology becoming an increasingly important part of everyday lives, access to tools and information relies heavily on the languages and language variants (dialects, accents etc.) these technologies support. Endangered and minority languages are the sufferers when the development is focused on languages like English and German, leaving them in a weaker position on a larger multilingual scale. Access to technology and thus vast amounts of information depends entirely on whether it is available in languages that are supported.
