It's a deeply-held belief among monolingual travellers that a good translation app will soon make language learning unnecessary. The more powerful the technology gets, the less effort we'll need to make. Or so the theory goes.
In reality, the opposite often happens. The more you depend on instant translation, the harder real conversation becomes. You stop noticing tone, you miss jokes, and you replace warm, slightly awkward human contact with a screen.
Professional translators know this better than anyone. "A sentence doesn't carry just information — it carries identity, history, humour, hesitation," says Aiko Tanaka, a Tokyo-based interpreter. "A machine handles the words. It doesn't handle the silences."
So do tourists really need to learn the language? Honestly, even fifty words help. Locals warm up to anyone who tries. And the more you try, the more confident you feel — even when you get it wrong.
