I'm currently living in a country where I don't speak the language. I can't believe how incredible translation tools are. Even though I don't understand when people speak to me, I can write and read emails, and accomplish things that would be incredibly more difficult without this ability (e.g. talking to my insurance agent). And when I say I can read and write emails, I mean it can do so in about 1.5x longer than a native one. I have developed very basic abilities in the language (in the 2 months I've been here), and so I constantly use translation tools and check in both directions -- translate to the language, modify it to make sense according to my understanding -- translate it back to English -- all within the space of a couple of minutes.
I still miss out on learning more idiomatic expressions, but I imagine those will come in time. In the meantime, I am able to get a surprising amount of business done, in ways that would have been impossible before.
Not to mention that continuously doing all this translation of my written communications is making me learn the spoken language much faster. Although, for that, nothing replaces actually speaking with people, of course! ;) But it's much easier to bootstrap actual conversation when you've been learning individual words by reading and writing.
Overall I would say that automatic translation tools have made it possible for my life to move in directions that where language would have been a serious roadblock in a previous era.
What is the other language, and how similar is it to English (or other languages you know)? (Beofre you answer, my predicted answer is "very similar".)
Similar enough, certainly. More similar to my second language. (I know French, I'm learning Spanish.)
It definitely lowers the barrier, but don't think there's no barrier just because it's a "similar" language. I'm claiming that automatic translation has accelerated my learning, not that learning it would be impossible otherwise.
Nonetheless it is quite difficult to live somewhere where you don't speak the language, no matter what tools you have available. Mostly it doesn't matter, but when you find yourself arguing with administrators... or the police...
(I almost got into a bike accident the other day. I wasn't even all that worried about my health, I was mostly scared of having to talk to people, hospital/police/insurance..! or argue with the guy who hit me...)
I still miss out on learning more idiomatic expressions, but I imagine those will come in time. In the meantime, I am able to get a surprising amount of business done, in ways that would have been impossible before.
Not to mention that continuously doing all this translation of my written communications is making me learn the spoken language much faster. Although, for that, nothing replaces actually speaking with people, of course! ;) But it's much easier to bootstrap actual conversation when you've been learning individual words by reading and writing.
Overall I would say that automatic translation tools have made it possible for my life to move in directions that where language would have been a serious roadblock in a previous era.