Most of us remember how hilariously bad machine translations were just a few years back. Today, Google Translate speaks 57 languages at the level of a 10-year-old. What’s interesting about this comparison is that the machine mastered those languages by actually learning like a child. That is, by not going by rules, but by how language is used. “Don’t ask for the meaning, ask for the use”, as Wittgenstein had put it. Fascinating read that also point to the future of human communication. Maybe tomorrow’s lingua franca is just a machine.

From Weekly Filet #41, in November 2011.