Learn how technology and artificial intelligence are advancing the speed of language learning.

By Joshua Rapp Learn

Jan 23, 2025 11:00 AM

Back in the days of yore, language translation was a highly specialized profession, critical for coordinating diplomacy or international trade. The first bilingual dictionary book, Vocabularius ex quo, was a German-Latin set of words published in 1467, while clay tablets containing lists of works in Sumerian and Akkadian date back as early as 2300 B.C.

Language translation has become easier over the years in many cases thanks to the work of linguists and other anthropologists. The development of computers and eventually, artificial intelligence, has given a massive push to language translation, taking it out of the hands of specialists or weighty books and into our phones.

But how has translation applications like Google Translate developed over time, and what were their predecessors?

How Computer Translation Started

People have tried to use computers to translate languages since the mid-20th century.

“The idea of online translation was something that people strived for when computers began,” says Jaroslaw Kutylowski, the CEO of DeepL, a company that provides translation services using neural systems.

In fact, one of the first uses of computers for something beyond numbers was an experiment conducted in 1954 after several years of work by researchers at Georgetown University and IBM. The demonstration only translated around 250 words using six grammar rules — mostly brief statements in Russian about science, law and military affairs that were converted into English in a matter of seconds.

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Source: Discover magazine