Will machine translation make language learning unnecessary?

Wednesday at Esperanto House:

Machine translation is the translation of text by a computer, with no human involvement. Google Translate and Deepl offer translations between 100 languages, including to and from Esperanto. The previously poor quality of computer translations is quickly improving as AI and neural network technology advance.

In this presentation and workshop, we will discuss if it is still worthwhile to learn other languages. We will also try different machine translations between English, Esperanto and other languages.

During the break, we will provide coffee, tea and play Esperanto music.

Today’s host, Rainer Kurz, has a PhD in engineering and is a former president of the German Esperanto Association. He is currently visiting Australia. Rainer speaks 5½ languages, with Esperanto being the one he is most passionate about. He initially learned Esperanto for 20 hours until he did his first Esperanto travel (to Japan). In the meantime he has used Esperanto to travel to over 40 countries.