There is something special about the desert wind.
I landed in Doha the other night and getting out of the plane felt like being embraced by a giant warm force. It went right through the essence of my being, warming up not only my London-weather-battered bones but also my soul. Deserts are such spiritual places.
And the spell continued on my connecting flight to Dubai. I watched a fellow passenger in the row next to me reciting his prayers. The small light above his seat shining on the beautiful Arabic characters of his book and the sleeves of his djellaba forming a snow-white aura around it.
I imagined his prayers merging in the air with those my 100-year-old grandmother in Italy recites every time I fly. Words in two very different languages travelling to the same place.
I have to admit the shopping spree I embarked on yesterday afternoon at Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates was somewhat less spiritual.
So I thought I would buy myself a book likely to make me think: Creating a World Without Poverty by Muhammad Yunus. My readers know how fond I am of Prof. Yunus and will understand that I could not wait to be back to the hotel to open the book.
I sat down in a corner of the mall and began reading….
As expected, I did find something that made me think. In the list of things he would like to see emerge by 2050, Yunus writes:
“Everybody will read and hear everything in his own language. Technology will make it possible for a person to speak, read, and write in his own language while the listener will hear and the reader will read the message in his own language. Software and gadgets will translate simultaneously as one speaks or downloads any text….”
I don’t doubt this is likely to happen. I am only thinking of all the hours I spent learning the languages I speak and how much the experience has become part of who I am.
Will people stop learning languages in the future? Will technology replace the effort to understand other cultures? Or will it make it easier?
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I don’t think that people will stop learning languages no matter how good the technology becomes. The language is part of the culture, and by learning it, we learn about what is inside of people of different cultures. I really value my study of Japanese. I don’t speak it much any more, but I still have the cultural knowhow I learned through learning the language. Still, I can’t wait for the translating machines, and flying cars and space trips and geodesic dome houses. Didn’t they promise us those in the 70’s? I’m tired of spending all the money and technology on war.
Thanks, Daneeta. This is reassuring.
Nah, don’t worry, won’t happen during our lifetime. Every time I run some text through a machine translation engine, I realize human translators won’t be unemployed for a long time.
I would hate to loose human translators. They served as “human gates” to many of the countries I visited. I think you are right, Maria.