'Your United States was normal': has translation tech really made language learning redundant?

By Ingrid Piller, Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics, Macquarie University

Every day, millions of people start the day by posting a greeting on social media. None of them expect to be arrested for their friendly morning ritual.

But that’s exactly what happened to a Palestinian construction worker in 2017, when the caption “يصبحهم” (“good morning”) on his Facebook selfie was auto-translated as “attack them.”

A human Arabic speaker would have immediately recognized…

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