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Donald Kenrick as polyglot:
could he be replaced by a machine?
Erik V. Gunnemark
Chapter 12:
Donald Kenrick as polyglot: could he be replaced by a machine?
Erik V. Gunnemark
According to the
information available to the association Amici
Linguarum, Donald Kenrick is probably now ‘Polyglot No.1’. In the age of
information technology we have to ask whether this is still a model to which to
aspire, or whether it is a talent superseded by the computer.
The Association Amici Linguarum was founded in 1964 as a
Scandinavian association of people interested in languages and culture. In the
late 1970s Donald Kenrick joined the circle collaborating with me on the
production of a general directory of countries, peoples and their languages,
and was listed as co-author of the first two editions, published under the
title A Geolinguistic Handbook in
1983 and 1985. In 1985 the association began collaboration with the American
Society for Geolinguistics and by the end of the twentieth century it had
members in about thirty countries around the world, particularly in Europe and
North America but also in Latin America and
Every year that
passes sees a greater accumulation of knowledge and experience within the ranks
of Amici Linguarum. However, as well
as deriving pleasure from this treasure-house, many members have been able to
make use of it in a direct practical way in the course of their work in
schools, universities, libraries and various types of enterprise, and as
authors or translators.
There has been
considerable correspondence within the Association about remarkable polyglots
of the past, and many stories – or perhaps we should say, legends – exist, but
I know of only two cases where information which may be considered factual and
reliable exists about such ‘superpolyglots’ of the past: Pent Nurmekund (Gethin
and Gunnemark 1996: 317-9) and Emil Krebs (Matzat 1999).
Dr Emil Krebs
(1867-1930) was a professional interpreter and translator for the German
Ministry for Foreign affairs. Matzat’s (1999) pamphlet concentrates on the
period of the German colonies in Peking and Tsingdao (where they founded the
famous Chinese brewery which thirsty scholars still have cause to praise), and
shows that Krebs was quite a character. His obituaries in newspapers and
journals in 1930 celebrated the fact that he could translate from over 100
languages and spoke around sixty of these. The exact number of languages given
depends, of course, on what is counted as a separate language. In this paper we
are erring on the cautious side by not counting as separate languages dialects
which are generally considered to be ‘the same’ language.
Professor Pent
Nurmekund (1905-97) was founder of the Oriental Department in the
Among living European
polyglots Donald Kenrick is pre-eminent, able to translate from over sixty
languages, and speaking around thirty of them, mostly fluently. Others include:
Eugen M. Czerniawski in
So far only one book
on polyglottery has been published which I can recommend, that by Dr Dmitri L.
Spivak (1989). He based his work on interviews with polyglots in
Another unexpected
finding of Spivak’s (1989) research was that all the polyglots interviewed
preferred to learn languages on their own.
So, polyglottery may well be called ‘a profession for autodidacts.’
Furthermore, like most polyglots in other countries, (c.f. Gethin and
Gunnemark, 1996: 50-1), the Russian ones regard today’s language-teaching
industry as a glaring scandal. But should we be worried about this? Is the
example of Kenrick irrelevant in the modern world ? Could he be replaced by a
machine – not now, of course, but say in about another twenty years?
The Fata Morgana of machine translation: “Just wait for another twenty
years!”
It is sometimes
argued that machine translation will make polyglottery redundant but it seems
to us that the development of information technology will make competent
multilingual translators more and not less necessary. The history of machine
translation has been one of recurrent enthusiasm followed by disillusion. The
initial burst of enthusiasm in the mid-1950s predicted that within twenty years
most scientific, technical and other non-fiction would be machine-translated.
In the mid-1960s, however, the US Department of Defense pulled out of financing
research. As this experience was forgotten however, advances in computing
brought forward a new wave of enthusiasm in the mid-1970s, suggesting that, if
not now, at some time in the next 20 years machine translation would be used to
save time and money in all non-fiction fields. As time progressed the claims
became more extravagant. At a translation conference in
In my view the claims
of various corporations offering machine translation are dangerously
overstated, but meet with relatively little protest, perhaps because even academics
have relatively little understanding of how machine translation ‘works’. The
necessary post-editing is not mentioned at all, or only in passing. In fact,
the term ‘machine translation’ is actually misleading, for as a rule it has to
be combined with post-editing, even for rough translations. For professional
standards of translation, competent translators are still needed.
Sometimes pre-editing
may be necessary or preferable; that is to say, if computer manuals or such are
put into a very standard form, machine translation may give better results. It
is possible that some time and money has been saved by giant corporations using
such techniques but they would still be wise to have a professional review of
the result! One should therefore always take a sceptical attitude to claims
that money is saved by using machine translation instead of traditional
translation.
We need people to
make sense of the things other people say or write. The development of
computing and the globalisation of information technology make polyglots like
Donald Kenrick more and not less necessary. They can form their own assessments
of what is meant by, and what the importance is, of information in another
language. The priorities programmed into machines can only ever be a selection
of human concerns. A broad human vision must stay in charge of technology. As a
language teacher Donald Kenrick has been in the forefront of using new
technology to promote language learning, but not to replace it. Information
technology will make multi-lingualism easier, rather than redundant.
References
Gethin, A. and Gunnemark, E.V., 1996 The
art and science of learning languages,
Matzat, William,
1999, Dr Emil Krebs, The Association
for German Life in East Asia,
Spivak, Dimitri L.
1989 Kak stat’ polyglotom, [How one
becomes a polyglot], private, St.Petersburg.
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