argia.eus
INPRIMATU
Weapon of passive destruction
Bea Salaberri @beatxo 2021eko martxoaren 17a

What do the tools that combine language and technology mean, especially among people working in the field of Basque culture? It's always been. Recently, automatic translators are in charge of pruning corners. In fact, complaints are frequent, disregarding these tools and presenting them in a way as enemies of the force in favor of the Basque Country, and the issue feeds the conversations between friends and professionals. They are accused of having disseminated without protocol, without guarantees of quality, of being substitutes for the creators in Euskera, of being frendly diglosi who will send us to unemployment, of creating bad texts and erdal arrows. In other words, they are weapons of mass destruction.

But can we Basques give up what all the other languages have? Is it not worthwhile for us to touch on all these developments? As Euskera is a small language, technology raises fears, so it would be better to worry about attitudes.

"Recently, automatic translators are in charge of pruning corners. And it is that there are many occasions when acts of denunciation occur, underscoring these tools and presenting them as enemies of force in favor of the Basque Country"

Because, at the same time, although we do not realize that we are sending information, as receivers we get good translators, of any language, when it comes to avoiding intermediaries and having first-hand information, we collect content directly from the source and it is in our interest. That is why we wish for our sake, what we appreciate for others, that we wish the world our understanding, that we understand the world in the way we desire.

Technological concerns have already existed. At each time I have heard and experienced these anxieties myself, too: “There will be online students, automatic voices reading slogans and programs correcting the work.” In Bizkitarte, to this day, I have not been taken from work, at least the tools, and I have never heard that the Basque student has chosen that option and that it has been fruitful. As I know, there has been far from being serious that they have been entrusted solely and fully to this type of translation instrument.

Will they represent us in our work tomorrow? For those who have the translation, I don't think it's good news, I can't deny, but the teachers are going to survive. In fact, the non-linguistic part, the subjectivity and the culture of language, can hardly dominate the computer. The subject chooses one word in front of the other. The delicacy of contexts and goals is a direct theme. It will always be more permanent to create a language or recreate the language of destination. Whoever wants to be part of the Basque Country will have to be part of the community and, suddenly or later, will learn the language, as he would waste time in the translations, would not fully understand the same thing, would lose refinement and would escape much of the sustut context, such as the references of the community, fashion, the past, the ways of relating.

In any case, the problem is that where communities are not sufficiently compact, in the semi-Euskaldunes, how is there going to be an important social pressure of maintenance where the need to learn Euskera is so scarce? To say Garbiki, here we speak in Basque a person with conscience and political will, otherwise there is nothing that stimulates us. If in the future, if it does not change it, it is given a quality tool to what the germ is to learn Euskera, why are you going to go to school today?

In any case, they will bring about change and we will have to overcome the reflex resistance, the retreat, the terror, to conquer us, to be of our service, good and favorable.