Throughout history, language has been and still stands as an impenetrable and stubborn barrier to communication between humans. Poets and scholars have always dreamed of eliminating this barrier by creating a single universal language that all human beings can understand, regardless of their nationalities, races and countries, but the dream remained only a dream. It never materialized over time.

There are currently hundreds or even thousands of languages ​​spoken in the world, and according to the EthnoLogue platform specialized in linguistics, there are 7,151 different languages ​​in the world now that humans use to communicate with each other.

Humans have circumvented this language barrier by trying to learn other languages, and the spread of translations between languages, but the dream of one language remained a romantic fantasy in the minds of poets only, until humanity reached the era of artificial intelligence and the time of the “metaverse”.

Metaverse as a new world

Bill Gates predicts that within 2-3 years, all virtual meetings will move from 2D to 3D worlds in metaverses, and Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Tiktok, Apple and other tech giants in the world to invest a lot of money and efforts in creating their own metaverses.

The global metaverse market is estimated at $1 trillion in annual forecast revenue, Forbes recently reported.

The question that arises is: In what language will the communication within the metaverses take place?

The question takes its importance in that the communication within the metaverse will be through the use of spoken and not written language, people will communicate together through direct speech in this new virtual world.

Writer Peter Malikov, an IT entrepreneur, attempts to answer this question in an article published by the Venture Beat platform recently, where the writer stresses the importance of “resolving the language barrier within the metaverse if we are talking about a global cyberspace that is supposed to unite Humanity, because we still deal with language there according to the same principles as in the physical world, where we have to speak, empathize, listen, be polite, respect, empathize, and in general, communications in and out of digital reality will be similar in many ways, which is a good thing because we don't have to learn from Zero, but the difficulties remain the same.

The writer refers to Meta's experience, which "currently gathers on its social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram users from different countries who speak different languages, communicating mainly within their language group without reaching people who speak another language."

In 2019, only 41 languages ​​were officially supported by Facebook, which means that thousands of other languages ​​are absent.

In 2-3 years, all virtual meetings will move from 2D to 3D worlds in Metaverse (Shutterstock)

But.. what if this problem could be overcome?

It may come to mind that we choose one language to be a global language for communication within metaverses and virtual worlds such as English for example, but this is not a solution, but rather a solution rejected by many countries and peoples of the world that are proud of their language, culture and civilization, and here Malikov sees " It would be a tragic choice to lose linguistic diversity by choosing only one of them as a global language."

And the answer lies in only two words, “artificial intelligence,” as Malikov sees it, who explains, “In the past decade, machine learning and artificial intelligence have improved in unprecedented ways, and machine translation has advanced significantly over the past few years, and communication networks are now benefiting We have noticed this in Facebook posts and comments, or in video translations such as those automatically generated by YouTube and Tik Tok.”

But in the metaverse it is different - as the writer emphasizes - and "we need more than that where people use their voices to speak, just as in the physical world, so the problem of the language barrier must be solved as smoothly as possible to make spoken voice conversations easy and comprehensive, and this It means we need to move forward to use the big choices that artificial intelligence (AI) can provide in this area."

Malikov notes that “Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg understands the importance and severity of this problem, as he announced in February 2022 that the company was working on building an “AI-powered universal speech translator” powered by artificial intelligence for languages ​​in its metaverses. It will work with everyone in the digital world, and will use artificial intelligence to provide simultaneous translation of widely spoken languages.”

Zuckerberg believes that this new artificial intelligence technology will help us speak with anyone in any language (Al Jazeera)

And Zuckerberg is quoted as saying, "The ability to communicate with anyone in any language... It's a superpower that people have always dreamed of, and artificial intelligence will provide that in our lives."

Malikov explains that "the universal speech translator from Meta will be able to directly translate the spoken speech of a person speaking a different language into spoken speech in the language of the receiving person without typing it first, and this will make the translation process unnoticeable and automatic, which will help to make conversations natural."

The writer notes that if this project succeeds, “people will not even remember that they are talking to someone whose native language they do not understand. It will be like a citizen-to-citizen conversation or between family members living in the same house, and this thing that will happen in metaverses in the near future cannot be achieved.” In the real physical world we live in now.

Artificial intelligence translation also helps maintain global linguistic diversity - as the writer stresses - as "it will motivate people to preserve their native languages ​​because they no longer constitute a barrier to international communication, and in the future, there will be no need to learn a foreign language to be part of society." international".

Malikov concludes his article by emphasizing that it takes “a lot of work before we get there, as a global speech translator must learn hundreds or even thousands of languages ​​and achieve the ability to translate from one to the other in real time. The engineers behind the project need to find on training data, which is not easy to get for many languages ​​that are not popular on the Internet.. It is a very complex and ambitious project, and it has huge potential to bring a lot of good to the world.”