Once my society limits where and when I can speak my language, the language begins to die. By virtue of their power, the decisions they make as most useful for them limit the choices of me and the rest of society. I discussed in another post the inherent biases that function in Google Translate. They define who people are, and they begin with what makes the most sense for the wealthy. I have to speak the dialect the engineers pre-selected for me. I can’t imagine what code-switching does to these apps they may handle English and Spanish well, but what about Spanglish? I’ll have to choose one or the other. My Basque acquaintance from Spain has difficulty understanding French Basque speakers, so I can’t imagine Google will do much better. If I speak African American Vernacular English, I’m in no better shape standard dialect is required. So if I want to speak Menominee to Skype or Google, I’m out of luck I’ll just have to use English. The individual does not get to decide what language their internet experience is in we only select from a menu cooked up by the developers. Since businesses develop these tools, and require a profit to continue to survive, their tool must first and foremost cater to users with power and wealth. If I want to use these tools effectively, I need to speak the highly-educated dialect of a prestige language-and prestige means wealth.

The tools force the choice they define the boxes our speech must fit into. They then have to train it to hear certain voices and particular dialects. The engineers decide what languages it can operate in. Sounds contradictory, no? How could an app that allows people to speak and be understood in their own language be detrimental to language variety?įor Microsoft or Google to release a tool for languages, development process works in a very specific way.

These tech giants are the new world empires, following neatly in the footsteps of empires, from the Babylonians to the British, who initiated language-loss millennia ago. Both of them are developing real-time translating apps, where people can speak and hear their own language as they converse with someone speaking a different language. Microsoft is killing language diversity-but they’re not the only high-tech culprit. How can tech companies aid the survival of minority languages?

Skype translator app