Lessons from a french fiasco

Image is mine

In recent times, AI has undoubtedly made communication across the globe easier. In my Hive journey, the AI Translator app has played a huge role by giving me the opportunity to read from authors in foreign languages.

With tools like Duolingo, Google Translate, etc., people from all over the world can now bridge the language barrier gap to a great degree. But then, there are limits, and unless maybe in the possible future, AI can never replace human intelligence.

I remember my friend studying French with Duolingo. This she did for 2 years before she became solid, or so she thought.

Well, my babe thought she was fluent in French until she traveled to the Republic of Benin with her fiancé on a vacation.

According to my friend, the locals were so fast and fluent in speaking French that she could barely pick out a word they were saying. It wasn't like she couldn't understand them; they were just really fast while she was just slow, and thus communication had barriers.

To salvage the situation, they resorted to Google Translate, although not for communicating or conversing with the locals but for placing orders and making inquiries.

Notably, unlike Nigeria, the lingua franca of the Republic of Benin is French, just like ours in Nigeria is English. I bet if my friend had gone for a proper French class with actual training from professionals for those two years she spent on Duolingo, she would have had a swell time just vibing and communicating with the locals in their lingua franca.

You see, the experience of my friend also took me down memory lane. While I was much younger, my family and I travelled to Cotonou for a religious seminar. During that time, the innovation of AI technology hadn't yet evolved to the way it is now.

So while I made some friends during the seminar, we could barely understand each other, as they communicated in French while I communicated in English. Probably if it was now, they wouldn't have been such a barrier, or at least not to the magnitude I had experienced it.

Indeed, we could say that the trend of various AI translators has aided diverse communication, which makes it a very good thing for humanity.

But then where I beg to differ is the "perfection" tag. Really, one cannot compare a conversation between people who are knowledgeable in a particular language to that of distinct language barriers communicating through the aid of AI translator software.

In my opinion, the trend of AI translators is great, but there is still a need for one to either get a formal learning process with professionals or just outrightly live among the locals to learn it.

While the only thing certain and constant is change, I still believe that AI can never water down the beauty of spoken language, as it's not just a means of communication but a symbol of our identity and cultural heritage. Again, fluency creates some sense of belonging, and while translation might seem forced, language is relational.