Translation Devices: Bridging Cultures or Weakening Them?

We live in a time and age where technology innovations have simplified almost everything, making life easier and doing things more seamlessly. It's a blessing that we will be forever grateful for, given how it has helped us. One of those aspects where technological innovation has impacted our world positively is in the aspect of language and communication. We all know the world population speaks different languages, and it'll be quite difficult to communicate unless you understand their language, which means you need to learn lots of languages for you to be able to communicate well with people of other races. Fortunately, technology has changed the narrative, making language interpretation devices that help you translate in real time and make communication go smoothly. But is this entirely a blessing, or does it have its downside?

To be honest, I must say that technology's positive impact is amazing, especially in the aspect of language translation, because of how it makes it very easy for you to communicate with people whose language you don't understand, without the need for you to learn their language, because the device can easily help you translate what they said to you and vice versa when you speak to them. It's a wonderful creation that'll go on to spread the wings of globalization and bring about more connections around the world. It'll eradicate the loads of barriers we used to experience in the past when it comes to intercounty or interracial communication.

In light of that, is this kind of technology a blessing entirely, or does it have a loophole that must be looked into? To be honest, there's no lie about how important this technology has been and can be further in the future. As I've listed above, its role in communication is beyond what one could have possibly comprehended or thought possible in the past, because back then, to communicate with people whose language you don't understand and who don't understand yours either, you needed to spend lots of time and be dedicated to learning their language so as to have that relationship. Given this technology, you don't need to spend months or years for that to happen, because you can communicate with them immediately.

The loophole I think this technology has is that it'll discourage people from taking out time to learn other people's languages, because they would have to rely on this technology to keep helping them translate and interpret different languages. Although I know not everyone will be like that, because others will still learn, but I know most people love the easy life, and it'll make them stop learning. It's worth knowing that when you refuse to learn but rely on this technology, you're indirectly depriving yourself of what you would have benefitted from the locals when they see you learn their language and can speak it.

I remember when I was in the north and learned Hausa, I received a higher level of respect from the locals when they saw me speak their language. Even though I'm not perfect, they just seemed happy and would be ready to go the extra mile for me. That isn't the case when I usually work around with someone to interpret for me. So that's just one of the benefits of learning other people's language. Yes, translation devices are amazing, but they shouldn't stop us from learning more languages.

All photos are mine.