Allez les Bleus!!

Just happened to listen to this week’s episode of one of the recent NPR podcast series titled Hidden Brain and it got me thinking a lot. I speak almost 5 languages (not fluently but to different degrees of expertise) and I am not sure how my mind thinks. One thing for sure though is that I happen to think in my mother tongue and my mind translates it in (almost) real-time while I communicate, be it talking or writing down my thoughts as I do while writing this blog post. If languages do influence our thinking and understanding and more importantly the biases we cultivate, what does it mean for language translators - do they also convey the biases that are inherently influenced by one’s language? Or as a technologist I am also inclined to think what would it mean for AI systems (say chat-bots) that are meant to facilitate communication? I now tend to believe that they have to be designed with the intricacies of languages and the influences, biases that it carries along encoded into the system in order for it to be more acceptable. Even if not as a chat-bot, it would be a great system to train people to work with people of different cultures so that we understand different cultures better and comfortably communicate taking into account their nuances.

If you are interested in listening to it, here it is: