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Machine translation is a quiet revolution. I am able to read people tweeting at me in Chinese (and they can translate on their end). I’ve had translated interactions before (Spanish) but Chinese seems like extra powerful thing since I can’t even guess unlike European languages.
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Careful. They're wondrously powerful for highly literal stuff. Languages are very idiomatic, usage is highly social, requiring lots of collective tacit knowledge (cf. Harry Collins, Tacit and Explicit Knowledge) that machines don't have. Take it from a duffer learning Chinese. :)
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I had an experience in a restaurant last year where we were both speaking into google translate so I could order food. The most future-feeling thing that’s happened to me in a long time
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其实更加恐怖的是,我是在用嘴巴说话,然后机器翻译成文字,然后你再看到的英文。
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