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William Watson: Maybe AI can help solve language stupidities

French won Quebec's language wars a long time ago. So why are we still regulating who can say how much in English at polling stations?

You may have had the experience, when travelling, of communicating via smartphone translation apps, of which there are now many. When we were in the Netherlands recently, a German-speaker asked for directions. When I said, in English, that I was sorry but I didn’t speak German he pulled out his phone, had me speak into it, read its translation of what I’d said, spoke back into it, had me read the translation of what he’d said and off we went, eventually figuring out how he could get where he wanted to go. Google Maps would have been a better bet for him but the phone app enabled communication despite our lack of a common language. 

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