Marketing 101: if you’re trying to sell something, you need to have a “Unique Value Proposition,” or UVP. What is it, exactly, that your product has that no other one has? What’s the combination of quality, price, niche features, etc., that you can provide that no one else can?
What’s interesting (to me at least) in the world of international higher education is how few Canadian institutions actually have a UVP, or at least one they could consciously enunciate. Usually it’s something along the lines of “we’re a quality university located in a vibrant community (replace “vibrant” with “idyllic” if you’re actually out in the boonies) and we offer degrees in English!” The subtext being, “You know you love English, you non-english-speaking foreigners – it’s the lingua franca of global commerce, innit?”
Well, imagine for a moment what would happen if that last bit weren’t true. Imagine if, as Nicholas Ostler posited a couple of years ago in The Last Lingua Franca, that machine translation were to improve to the point where it rendered the need to learn foreign languages essentially obsolete. The social cost of learning another language is high, as is people’s attachment to their own language. If machines could translate for us, demand for second language learning would likely plummet.
O.K., you don’t need to imagine any more. Last month, Microsoft Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid was at a conference in Tianjin and took the opportunity to show off some machine translation software that did simultaneous spoken English-Mandarin translation. You can read LiveScience’s account of the event here, but you really want to actually watch the video (actual demonstration starts at about 7:30).
If that didn’t totally blow your mind, go get a cup of coffee and watch it again when you’re awake. This is the universal translator. This is the Babel fish. O.K., the error-rate is still pretty high. But the countdown is on to these things being widely available commercially. We’re talking years, not decades.
Quite apart from the obvious havoc this is going to wreak on modern language departments (seriously – who’s going to pay for them once simultaneous machine translation is ubiquitous?), everyone banking on international education being a cash cow for decades to come needs to think things through very carefully. Just ask yourself this: how many international students would still go to your school if they didn’t need to learn English?
Yeah. Exactly. Now what’s your UVP?
Truly game-changing technologies don’t come along that often, but this is one of them. This business just got a lot tougher.
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Sorry Alex — I don’t buy into your premise. Your stretching the concept that just understanding English will render our post-secondary institutions redundant to foreign students. Speaking a language fluently is different from a translation — there are significant cultural benefits that go with speaking the language, which is what international students are interested in learning as much as the language. When I do business in China I always have a translator with me, but still there are significant nuances that are missed in translation – not to mention that real communication takes place when we’re “together” , meaning we’re as one. A digital process only replaces my translator, not the situation. Those who speak the language will always have an advantage over those who translate.
I do agree with your premise of the UVP — many Canadian institutions are a mish-mash of offerings. Many of our institutions are thinking that by offering on-line courses the world will coming running to their doors — except, by offering on-line they only dilute their current UVP (which for most is the local proximity institution) and if on-line is the preferred method of delivery, our core students have a much wider choice within the world — essentially the local institution offers nothing more now that those who are miles away. Our administrators believe this will be their saviour — I am more cynical and think it could be their demise without developing a real UVP other than proximity. Isn’t that what we’ve seen with our manufacturing industries? We rested on our location to the US and a weak dollar and forgot about productivity and providing innovative solutions to our customers. Our institutions have to offer innovative solutions to learning — and its not just on the delivery method or the language — it has to be what our institutions offer in employment benefits, innovation of products and services and most importantly, what they offer to students that other institutions don’t.
Oh not the artificial interlligence will replace us thing. Alex, technology innovations simply create spin off needs and creative positioning within organizations. Bring on the technology, and the new course in Using your New Universal DoItAll.
Sorry, Alex, but I have to agree with the previous poster – I don’t buy your premise. Actually, I think you are confusing a lot of things.
First of all, I, too, am fascinated by new language technologies, by what has been achieved and what they can do – and will be able to do in the future. In the field of professional translation (text translation), tools are increasingly helpful to human translators. That being said, they are certainly not there to replace translators but to help translators and to increase productivity. Of course, MT (machine translation) is already able to produce, at times, acceptable translations of simple, non-ambiguous sentences and short, uncomplicated texts. However, when it comes to legal texts, contracts, scientific articles, literature, etc., fully-automated, high-quality machine translation is just not possible. Tools can help, but they are insufficient. Professional translators are still required.
As for speech translation, there has indeed been a lot of progress, but we are far from perfection. Professional interpreters need not feel threatened. Even if – and I know that I will never live to see this – speech translation were to achieve perfection, do you think that that would render obsolete the need to learn another language? How would this work? Really.
Finally, I think you are confusing modern language departments with professional translation schools. Students in modern language departments do not study translation and usually do not become translators. Some may pursue studies in translation after an undergraduate degree, but a B.A. in language and literature (English, French, Spanish, Mandarin or whatever) does not qualify one to become a translator. They are in fact not recognized in the field of translation. Moreover, students who major in languages and literature have not done so in order to become translators. There are many reasons why students opt for those disciplines, as you very well know. Machine translation, as much as it may improve, will not deter these students to study what they have chosen to study.
Finally, as for translation schools, there are less than a dozen across Canada (compared to the dozens and dozens of modern language departments). They are very different from modern language departments in that they train professional translators (which includes translation technologies) and interpreters. These schools are still attracting students and firms are still hiring.
That being said, do modern language departments have big challenges ahead? Absolutely. But it is certainly not because of the threat of machine translation…
I agree with the useful distinction you’re between translation schools and (the far larger, in terms of enrolments) modern languages schools. I would agree that this affects the latter far more than the former. But I think most people who take the latter are doing it because they have at best a casual interest in the subject. Good simultaneous machine translation takes away a lot of the drive for that casual interest. Hence my comment that I think they’re going to shrink quite a bit.
So, you are at a banquet in China. Everyone is talking at once. Toasts and compliments are being exchanged. Smiles all around. And the actual communication taking place, the messages being sent and received, are the _opposite_ of what the words say. Machine translation, even once it is perfected, will not only be no help in that situation, it could actually be detrimental. The breathless enthusiasm of the blog post is rather sweet, in a way, but completely naive about how communication happens in the real world.
Like the previous commenter I find these developments in mechanized translation totally fascinating. When the bugs get ironed out, computer translation could be a great boon for well-gadgeted tourists (as well as for those who want to con them — new opportunities galore!). But this is simply not connected to the value of high-level university education in a foreign language, as far as I can see.
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for reading our stuff. As with the previous couple of posters, I think you’re mistaking my argument. You’re saying “high-level university education is still relevant even with better simultaneous machine translation”, because there will always be things a machine can’t do. I’m not disputing that. I’m simply saying that most people who currently enroll in language courses aren’t necessarily after that level of fluency. The quality of the program has nothing to do with demand. There are some fantastic philology courses out there; doesn’t mean people are knocking down the doors to take them.
Without student demand, programs will wither and die. This invention will dampen demand. That’s all I’m saying.