Will We Still Learn Languages When Machines Can Translate? (with Abby Walker)

Live AI translation tools are making it easier to converse across languages without a human translator, a phrasebook, or years of study. So will we all just stop taking Spanish or Mandarin classes? Sociolinguist Abby Walker doesn’t think so. She shares the many reasons we learn new languages, some of which have little to do with functional communication at all. We also hear how one AI-assisted conversation brought two future in-laws together, why machine translation is still so darn buggy, and why some languages are attracting a resurgence of new learners even in the age of translation apps.

Life, Automated is a production of the Ryan Institute on Complexity, at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. The host is Jess Love, senior director. Distributed by KQED.

Producer:  Jesse Dukes

Music: Steven Jackson

Recording: George Christensen, Will Feeney

Promotional help from Ananya Mallapragada

Editorial guidance from Laura Pavin

Special thanks to Larry Berliner and Georgi Demirev for their help testing out live translation tools