P4Q2 - Andrew

 All over the world there are around 7,000 languages that are being spoken every single day. Every language has its unique touch whether it be tenses, accents, different grammatical formations, and so many more little details. This can make it hard for people that speak two different languages to properly communicate with each other and properly understand each other. 

The author of this article brings up a very interesting and valuable point that the researcher, Lera Boroditsky, mentions, “In English… you would likely say ‘she broke the cup.’ However in Japanese or Spanish… if [the cup breaking] were an accident… the speaker would essentially say, ‘the cup broke itself’”. There are probably hundreds of more examples of linguistic complications that create a language barrier and make speaking to someone that speaks a foreign language even harder to accomplish. 

A big reason that this miniscule seeming problem could be such an issue for communication is that modern day translation technology is not 100% perfect. When using a free use program like Google Translate, for instance, some of the words or grammar will be translated incorrectly and cause confusion for people just trying to make sense of what the other person is trying to convey. This can lead to problems where the translation technology says the wrong word or sentence and could possibly offend someone unintentionally. 

Another important point that has been brought up in this article is the difference between how English speaking people use past tense and how Peruvian Yagua speakers use past tense. In Yagua, speakers have 5 specific ways to convey the past tense like when describing when a specific event occurred; “a few hours prior; the day before; roughly one week to a month ago; roughly two months to two years ago; and the distant or legendary past.” In English, speakers talking about the past will usually say “a while ago”, “not too long ago”, “in the past”, and other less precise phrases that convey something that occurred in the prior time period. 

Translation between these two different languages would also be a challenge because if an English speaker tried to say “I ate a steak a while ago” or “In the past, I’ve been to some pretty intense parties.” to a Yagua speaker, the point would not come across correctly. These phrases, when put through the translation technology, would create unnecessary confusion and another language barrier between speakers. 

The last point that this article makes is a characteristic of the Indonesian language. The article says, “Indonesian verbs never change to express time: Make is always just ‘make’. Although Indonesian speakers can add words like already or soon, this is optional. It doesn’t feel incomplete or ungrammatical to just say, ‘I make dinner’. This is very interesting because it shows how truly different and special each language is.

For example, let’s say two people are talking using Google translate; one speaking Indonesian and one speaking English. The Indonesian speaker wants to say that he just washed his car a few hours ago. However, when the idea is put through translation, the phrase that would come through the English side would be something like ‘I wash car’. This would be confusing for the English speaker because they would not know if the Indonesian speaker was talking about doing this action in the past, present, or future.

In conclusion, while each language, all 7,000 roughly, is unique enough to cause understanding issues when translated, there is always a solution to problems. While the free translation programs are not as accurate when it comes to more less spoken languages, there are ones that users can pay for. While these programs do in fact work better, they also can be pricey. However, many tech inventors want accurate and reliable translating programs to be widely available and free for the general public. Hopefully, sometime in the near future, people will have the ability to properly understand other languages and speak with countless people fluently all around the world.