For me personally, this has become less of an issue in the last few years. I can't remember the last time I was unable to extract the meaning from a text fragent of interest. If you know a handful languages and substitute the rest with those ubiquitous translation services, there is little that remains inaccessible.
I'm still hoping for a babelfish universe in which a combination of technology and our own mental meaning recognition facilities makes languages a non-issue.
Of course, at this point your mileage may vary. I'd probably not be writing this if 90% of the text I encountered was Chinese, since I have to rely 100% on translation tools to read that. But we're getting there (hopefully).
Comments
For me personally, this has become less of an issue in the last few years. I can't remember the last time I was unable to extract the meaning from a text fragent of interest. If you know a handful languages and substitute the rest with those ubiquitous translation services, there is little that remains inaccessible.
I'm still hoping for a babelfish universe in which a combination of technology and our own mental meaning recognition facilities makes languages a non-issue.
Of course, at this point your mileage may vary. I'd probably not be writing this if 90% of the text I encountered was Chinese, since I have to rely 100% on translation tools to read that. But we're getting there (hopefully).