Omnibot
Today we travel to a world with universal translation devices. Where the babelfish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comes true (although probably not in the form of an evolved organism, but let's not fret about the details).\xa0\n\xa0\n\xa0We start this episode with Barry Slaughter Olsen, who's the co-president of Interpret America. Barry tells us all about what interpreting and translation actually is, and why it will be really hard to replace human translation with machines.\n\xa0\n\xa0Then we talked to Julie Sedivy, a writer and language scientist based in Calgary. She helps us think about what these kinds of devices might do for language loss and cultural assimilation of immigrants. Do people still learn English when they move to America or Canada?\n\xa0\n\xa0Last we talked to Erin McKean, the editor of Wordnik, the world's largest English Language dictionary. She walks us through a ton of fun future possibilities like branded Taylor Swift language plugins and online translation truthers.\n\xa0\n\xa0Links and references mentioned in today's episode:\n\xa0\n\xa0Interpret America\n\xa0Is the language barrier really about to fall?\xa0\n\xa0Long wait to come to America for Iraqis, Afghans who served U.S. troops\n\xa0Julie Sedivy writes about losing and regaining Czech\n\xa0Wordnik\n\xa0A Spanish town's Google Translate fail\n\xa0Cops use Google Translate to question woman\xa0\n\xa0\n\xa0Flash Forward is produced by me, Rose Eveleth, and is part of the Boing Boing podcast family. The intro music is by Asura and the outtro music is by Broke for Free. Special thanks this week to Ciar\xe1n Doyle, David Faiz, Josh Newman and No\xe9 Ramalleira. The episode art is by Matt Lubchansky. The episode art is by Matt Lubchansky.\xa0\n\xa0\n\xa0If you want to suggest a future we should take on, send us a note on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook or by email at info@flashforwardpod.com. We love hearing your ideas! And if you think you\u2019ve spotted one of the little references I\u2019ve hidden in the episode, email us there too. If you\u2019re right, I\u2019ll send you something cool.\xa0\n\xa0\n\xa0And if you want to support the show, there are a few ways you can do that too! We have a Patreon page, where you can donate to the show. But if that\u2019s not in the cards for you, you can head to iTunes and leave us a nice review or just tell your friends about us. Those things really do help.\xa0\n\xa0\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices