Learning languages and translation apps
stroke. 10 If these are the benefits that we can glean from mastering a modern foreign language individually, then what does this reveal about societies who are collectively bilingual?
Since 2004, it has not been compulsory for pupils in England to take a modern foreign language (MFL) at GCSE, although it is compulsory to study an MFL in Key Stages 2 and 3. A 2024 House of Commons Research briefing shows the damage that this government policy has caused over the past two decades. It states that ‘ in April 2018, 32% of UK 15 – 30-year-olds felt confident reading and writing in two or more languages, compared to … 80% on average across EU member states’ . The Commons briefing goes onto identify the consequences: business has been lost to UK companies through lack of language skills; the UK’s ‘soft power’ and effectiveness in conflict and matters of national security has been limited by a shortage of speakers of strategically important languages; the UK is under-represented internationally, for instance, in the EU civil service or in the translating and interpreting departments of the UN; the community and heritage languages spoken in the UK are at times undervalued. 11 It argues that with a greater engagement with MFL, the UK could enjoy the following benefits: ‘ UK businesses can participate fully in the global market place using the language and communication skills of their workforce; the UK is able to maximize its role and authority in foreign policy through language and diplomacy; educational attainment in a wide range of languages brings with it personal cognitive benefits as well as the ‘cultural agility’ vital to international relations and development; languages enhance the cultural capital and social cohesion of the different communities of the UK. ’ 12 Clearly, the use of increasingly sophisticated AI translation services has not made up for the fundamental lack of language skills in the UK workforce, which has left us disadvantaged within the UK, in Europe and on the world stage. Having seen the effect of language acquisition on the human side, individually and societally, let us turn our attention to the mechanism of translation apps because their architecture can give us an insight into how far they can replace human translation. The latest machine translation technology available is neural machine translation (NMT), which uses complex deep learning models to translate text. This is capable of generating high-quality translations with the help of sophisticated language translation algorithms. Both Google Translate and DeepL Translator use this technology. 13 Interestingly, NMT is modelled on the human brain in which neurons are connected to each other to receive information, process it, and pass it to other neurons. Similarly, neural networks receive information in the input layer, process it through at least one hidden layer, and then pass the result to the output layer. So, a neural network at its simplest comprises an input layer, a hidden layer, and an output layer. Deep learning is comprised of several hidden layers of neural networks that perform complex operations on massive amounts of structured and unstructured data. They identify patterns in real-world data such as images, text, sound, and time series, using training data to improve the 10 Counts, A. The Health Benefits Of Learning Foreign Languages https://medium.com/@alexcounts09/the-health- benefits-of-learning-foreign-languages-3ceb15ba9af7 Consulted: 19/7/2024. 11 Long, R. & Danechi, S. Language Teaching in Schools (England), House of Commons Library, 18 th January 2024 https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7388/CBP-7388.pdf, p. 29. Consulted: 19/7/2024. 12 Ibid. 13 Alsan, M. The Best Machine Translation Software You Can Try In 2024 https://www.weglot.com/blog/machine- translation-software Consulted: 19/7/2024.
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