In Greece there is a wonderfully dexterous word, malaka. When someone uses it, they might be letting you know they’d share a foxhole with you or maybe a pint. Similarly, they might be cursing you as the worst person they’ve ever known, or just saying you’re an idiot.
The way someone says malaka is fundamental to understanding what they mean when they say it. Even non-Greek speakers can generally get the emotional gist of it. That’s because how we speak is fundamental to what we mean.
In Hiberno-English, it could be how we say something is grand, whereas calling someone a cladhaire as Gaeilge is ripe for confusion.
All of which is to say that the real-time audio translation that Apple is rolling out comes with some challenges.
The live translation feature on AirPods promises on-device translation into audio for the user. In real time, this has quite a few possibilities such as managing calls with international teams or simply shopping while overseas.
The concept isn’t entirely new, Google’s Pixel Buds already have a version of this feature, only not with audio translation. Instead they relay the information to your smartphone with text.
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What Apple is offering is a form of hands-free, real-time conversation across multiple languages. The Babel fish idea of Douglas Adams in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in real life.
This has been the white whale of language services across tech for some time. It’s no accident that one of the first translation services to take off in the internet age was called Babel Fish (it’s since been absorbed into Microsoft’s translation function).
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Giving users a chance to convert without fumbling for a phone, still better than a pocket dictionary, has obvious advantages to both businesses and consumers. Apple’s system is designed to work entirely on the user device.
From a privacy perspective that’s quite useful, as users know where what they are saying is being stored. It also aids with speed. While cloud technology is quite fast, depending on coverage it can be wobbly. Using the on-device translate function of the related phone, only limited to whatever languages have been downloaded, speeds up the process significantly.
In theory, this innovation by Apple has the potential to be as transformative to travel as GPS has been. There’s just one issue, when your phone tells you to turn left, it doesn’t really mean to turn right.
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There is context to the way we communicate. The written form helps reduce the potential for confusion as people tend to be more obviously deliberate in their meaning when writing, sarcastic exceptions aside.
With speech, we can communicate our emotions, energy, relationships and so much more with just a single word. Artificial intelligence (AI) has come part of the way on the journey of understanding tonal shift, but clearing the formative stage is still beyond reach.
That reduces the use cases for translation services almost immediately to transactional analysis. Even then, issues are obvious. Just ask anyone who has used an AI-based transcription service such as Otter.
Words overlap or are misunderstood by the AI. That makes sense, as all of our voices are unique. Add on the need to translate from one language to another and the likelihood of error increases. Then you get to when it is converted into audio and we’re entering purple monkey dishwasher territory.
A system that hears everything but doesn’t understand it dilutes the meaning of a conversation beyond recognition. That’s why interpreters and translators hold very different jobs in international relations. The former are relied upon to convey more than the words spoken, with meaning more important than detail, while the latter are heavily focused on detailed phrasing.
The debate is moot in Ireland, as the function isn’t initially being rolled out in the EU. Apple expects to change this in the coming months, as it seeks to meet interoperability requirements under the Digital Markets Act.
That gives us a chance to observe and react. Live audio translation is naturally going to have some absolute clangers in the early days. This is guaranteed with every new technology that involves human interaction.
What will prove interesting is how users react after the hype over early issues dies down. By the time Apple feels it has met the interoperability requirements for the EU, it might already be clear where the service has merit.
Customer service centres will likely be among the first to embrace it, much to the chagrin of anyone who has ever used one. After that, there might actually be cases where this form of translation has benefits.
The true test of real-time translation won’t be when it converts Greek into English in your ears. It will be when those earbuds tell you someone called you a malaka and you know whether to smile or duck.
