Lost-In-Translation

The previous thought assumes definitional variance across one language. Luckily, we have over 6,500 of them — which is a beautiful thing, I love learning new languages. However, our AR future may cause the majority of them to become extinct.

In our future, it is possible that the visual definition of words, as defined by the set of images used to construct them, will only exist one or two languages. As such, it will only adhere to only those culture’s understanding of the word. Given that the US and China are at the forefront of the AR race, it’s safe to assume such definitions will be constructed in English or Mandarin. For speakers of other tongues, any object will be labeled in one language by the computer and translated to the user’s native tongue before outputting it to them. In doing so, meaning is lost as direct translations often cause the cultural meanings of words to be skewed.

For speakers of other tongues, the problems that come with the black boxing of interpretation magnifies. Now, there are two points in the visual perception process which a comprehension error can occur. 1) when actually labeling an object and 2) when translating that label to a foreign language without skewing its intended meaning.

A quick example here would be the English word, loveseat. Loveseat is a popular term used to refer to a cozy sofa meant to seat two people who are in some form of a romantic relationship. In Mandarin, the equivalent to loveseat is 双人沙发, which translates more closely to “two-person sofa”. Both refer to the same thing but the Mandarin equivalent carries none of the connotations nor implications of the English word.

In such a future, what will the effect of ubiquitous AR be on the variance of perspectives and viewpoints, informed by cultural-linguistical differences, spread across humanity?

If English or Mandarin becomes the predominant language, then beautiful words such as sangfroid or zugzwang that have not been integrated into the English language will cease to exist and we, as a species, will have lost the vocabulary to engage with those ideas. I’m worried that this technology will cause for words whose meanings are only captured by its connotations in its native language and culture to be lost or have their meanings skewed by this digital consolidation of language.

While it is possible to construct visual dictionaries of all languages using different datasets, the difficulty to do so properly will likely lead to the creation of one or two “complete” dictionaries that are comprehensive enough to be useful. The trick here is to make it easy for speakers of minority languages to add their own words and edit existing ones to fit their own cultural interpretations. It’s a hard UX problem that’s important to solve if we are to construct a future that doesn’t erase the ideals of minority cultures.