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thrifty
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
Posts: 1665
Location: chip van
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 Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 7:53 pm Post subject: |
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| I suspect the challenge for TEFLers will be how to cope with pay that is going down in real terms. |
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Stephen Jones
Joined: 21 Feb 2003
Posts: 4124
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| Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 9:07 pm Post subject: |
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| the simplicity of Chinese grammar is half the language's beauty. |
Simplicity in grammar often simply means the difficulties show somewhere else or later on. |
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william wallace
Joined: 14 May 2003
Posts: 2869
Location: in between
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| Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 1:58 am Post subject: Dear Steven Jones... |
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nil
Last edited by william wallace on Sat Nov 24, 2007 5:43 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Stephen Jones
Joined: 21 Feb 2003
Posts: 4124
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| Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 11:05 am Post subject: |
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| Not knowing much at all about this present computing revolution,I'll modify my answer with the information you supplied.A Russian picks up the phone and calls his business partner in London, and immediately the software translates his Russian into English, and vice versa.I believe, the ingredients for such a thing exists at present, but there are a few problems at present with accent and idiomatic speech,but I'm assuming there is enough of a market for such a thing as to expedite it's maturity. |
There are massive problems with such a thing, and it's nowhere near maturity. To check it out type something into one of the Babel fish translation machines on the internet, type the output to translate into another language, and then type the output to translate back into English.
It's not a question of lack of demand. The EU has been doing research on automated translation for decades because of the immense cost of having all documents in fifteen or more official languages. The software is good enough to be passed on to a monolingual speaker of the L2 at the other end for correction, and then the original and translation can be passed on to a translator for final approval.
As far as simultaneous translation goes, I suspect the results would be surrreal as neither side would have any clue as to what input the other side is receiving. Simultaneous translators are very highly paid professionals and the best of them are snapped up by the top levels of government. And humans can be reasonably considered as specialized software programs for the translation of languages. |
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moot point
Joined: 22 Feb 2005
Posts: 441
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| Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 11:51 am Post subject: |
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| not in our lifetime and in fact I'll probably encourage my kids to seek a job in the same field. As for their grandchidren, then perhaps the technology will finally succeed in an actual interpretation. |
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Deconstructor
Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Posts: 775
Location: Montreal
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| Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 4:17 pm Post subject: |
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| The greatest threat to English is Spanish. When 30% of The U.S. population is Spanish you know that it is only a matter of time before The U.S. becomes bilingual and English begins to decline. If I were a U.S. lawmaker I would definitely push to make English the one and only official language of The U.S. or kiss it good bye. |
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guest of Japan
Joined: 28 Feb 2003
Posts: 1601
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 5:00 pm Post subject: |
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I think legislating English as the official language would come off as pretty xenophobic. Besides, it would only be a matter of time before the Spanish speaking population gained enough political power to then legislate Spanish as an official language. As it stands right now, English is the de facto official language. As the upper class of society is made up of mostly native English speakers, I don't see English going anywhere. Additionally, I don't see having a bilingual society as a bad thing as opposed to two monolingual groups making up one society.
Also, as the world continues to become more and more interconnected, I don't believe that TEFL will die away. I do see the standards of TEFL eventually going up after the loss of the English as a Hobbly Language phenomenon that overwhelms most of Asia. In the meantime the quality of jobs will degrade until English becomes a necessity for societies rather than a money making venture for individuals or corporatations. Thereafter I see the ebb and flow of supply and demand. Of course after seeing the manner in which the Japanese TEFL market has been maturing, I wouldn't be surprised if my prediction is 100% wrong. |
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Deconstructor
Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Posts: 775
Location: Montreal
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| Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 5:17 pm Post subject: |
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| guest of Japan wrote: |
I think legislating English as the official language would come off as pretty xenophobic. Besides, it would only be a matter of time before the Spanish speaking population gained enough political power to then legislate Spanish as an official language. As it stands right now, English is the de facto official language. As the upper class of society is made up of mostly native English speakers, I don't see English going anywhere. Additionally, I don't see having a bilingual society as a bad thing as opposed to two monolingual groups making up one society.
Also, as the world continues to become more and more interconnected, I don't believe that TEFL will die away. I do see the standards of TEFL eventually going up after the loss of the English as a Hobbly Language phenomenon that overwhelms most of Asia. In the meantime the quality of jobs will degrade until English becomes a necessity for societies rather than a money making venture for individuals or corporatations. Thereafter I see the ebb and flow of supply and demand. Of course after seeing the manner in which the Japanese TEFL market has been maturing, I wouldn't be surprised if my prediction is 100% wrong. |
I was raised in Montreal where forty years ago the official language was English even though 80% of the population was French. That changed when the French took over the political system and instituted a few laws to protect their culture.
#1: No English signs are allowed unless there is also a French sign and twice as large.
#2: French is the language of business and political life.
While this may seem xenophobic, it was absolutely necessary to prevent English form completely taking over, as was the case 40 years ago, and the complete destruction of the French language and culture.
Even today, it is not possible to see an English movie unless the French translation is also available.
Quebec is still officially bilingual, but you'd have to search with a powerful flashlight to find English signs in many parts of Montreal.
On the Mexican border Americans better build a canal as wide as the Amazon river and a wall from sea to shining sea high enough to reach heaven's gate if they want their language protected. |
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william wallace
Joined: 14 May 2003
Posts: 2869
Location: in between
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| Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 1:54 am Post subject: Dear Steven Jones... |
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nil
Last edited by william wallace on Sat Nov 24, 2007 6:44 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Cdaniels
Joined: 21 Mar 2005
Posts: 663
Location: Dunwich, Massachusetts
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| Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 2:30 am Post subject: Re: Dear Steven Jones... |
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| william wallace wrote: |
| Not knowing much at all about this present computing revolution... the ingredients for such a thing exists at present, but there are a few problems at present with accent and idiomatic speech,but I'm assuming there is enough of a market for such a thing as to expedite it's maturity. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_translation#Computer-assisted_translation
Actually this has been thought of as around-the-corner technology for about forty years. Computer processing is much better at providing assistance, and speeding up the work of human translators, rather than doing "natural language processing" directly.
Also when there is also an nearly infinite supply of naive English "teachers" to isolate and exploit, why spend the money on computers? |
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william wallace
Joined: 14 May 2003
Posts: 2869
Location: in between
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| Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 4:44 am Post subject: Dear CDaniels.... |
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nil
Last edited by william wallace on Sat Nov 24, 2007 6:59 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Stephen Jones
Joined: 21 Feb 2003
Posts: 4124
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| Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 11:30 am Post subject: |
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| Another "just around the corner technology" is nuclear fusion energy. Ask anybody who works in the field and they will give you the answer "in 40-50 years". The problem is they've been giving the same answer since the 1960s. |
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ls650
Joined: 10 May 2003
Posts: 3484
Location: British Columbia
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| Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 12:43 pm Post subject: Re: Dear Steven Jones... |
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| I don't think that a guy "who happens to supervise some large computer operation in China" is necessarily an expert on voice recognition and language translation technology. |
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orangiey
Joined: 30 Jan 2005
Posts: 217
Location: UK
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| Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2006 11:25 am Post subject: |
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I can't see Chinese being a threat to the global reputation of English for the main reason that whilst it's a big country not everyone speaks the same language!
In the extreme case it's like comparing German to English, it's not like comparing American English to British English!
China is a 'closed country' whether they would agree or not, so restricting it's natives will prevent the true spread of a language. How did English get to the four corners of the globe? Freedom to travel!
Spanish maybe a serious contender to English but then again it is easier to learn!  |
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GambateBingBangBOOM
Joined: 04 Nov 2003
Posts: 2021
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 4:32 am Post subject: Re: Dear Steven Jones... |
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| william wallace wrote: |
| English has anywhere from 600,000 to 1.5 million words with countless combinations.If you look at the specifications of the English language no other language comes close.English is used in science and business for it's ability to articulate abstract thought so well; Mandarin on the other hand, is now doing exactly what Japanese did a few decades ago(and in general, what all other major languages are now doing) by incorporating English loan-words |
Part of the reason English has been so successful is precisely because it has so many words. English has many words from Latinic as well as Germanic families. So the majority of Western Europe (and given the number of Eastern Europeans who've studied German in the past, I guess you could add them, to a lesser degree) can easily learn to communicate in English. That means that English is easily used throughout Europe (certainly Western Europe where most of the economy is based) as well as North America. English also incorporates other languages pretty easily (for example, the verb 'to shink' means to take the Shinkansen), and also English native speaking people on average (possibly with the exception of many people in the US, for some reason) seem to have very little difficulty dealing with heavy foreign accents, but that may be a social construct (we're used to hearing it) rather than anything to do with the reduction of the non-stressed vowel to schwa or other aspects of the spoken langauge itself.
Regardless of how influential China becomes economically, the country is not going to be able to convince Europe and America (especially North but also South) that it's better to learn a language that has absolutely no realtion to their own (and memorize thousands of characters in order to do it- and again as others have said, Chinese is not one language, it's many but they are mutually intelligible through the written word/character) to replace the one that is now used that is related and uses the same, or a very similar alphabet.
I think Spanish may be easy to learn for English speakers, but it may be harder to learn than English for other Germanic family language speakers (ex. German, Dutch, Frissian and on the other arm Norwegian, Danish, Swedish Icelandic).
ETA
In fact, for most Canadians, Italian would probably be the easiest other Romance language to learn because it shares an 89% lexical similarity to French (which all Canadians are supposed to learn to at least upper beginner level).
http://www.orbilat.com/General_Survey/Romance_Languages.html
Interesting chart comparing similarities between Romance languages. In fact if you look through it, it seems that Italian is almost like a hub through which the others changed (so maybe Italian has the most in common with Latin, or maybe it's just a coincidence. I've never taken Latin, I don't know) because the similarities for all the languages listed are int he 80% range, except for Rumanian, which is obviously going to have developed more independently than the others.
Last edited by GambateBingBangBOOM on Mon Jul 31, 2006 7:07 am; edited 1 time in total |
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