UCFL’s Chair, Professor Emma Cayley, recently joined colleagues across the sector to comment on current challenges and initiatives to promote languages learning, particularly in the context of perceived threats or opportunities raised by AI. Their comments feature in an article in Times Higher Education, ‘Is AI the final nail in the coffin for modern languages?‘
The article comments that “some insiders point to the rise of joint or combined honours degrees as evidence not so much of decline as of evolution of modern languages.” At UCFL we suggest that artificial intelligence is most emphatically not a nail in the coffin but a path to reinvention for Modern Languages.
It is further argued in the article by British Academy Lead Fellow for Languages, Professor Charles Forsdick, that the lack of coordinated government support for languages in the UK “means that the provision is primarily subject to perceived student demand and at the whim of institutional autonomy”. This comment reinforces to need for the introduction of a regulator for Higher Education, to protect all subject areas, as called for by the British Academy.
For further insight into these topics, see a previous article on the exaggeration of the demise of modern languages by UCFL’s Chair, Emma Cayley, our Honorary Policy Advisor, Wendy Ayres-Bennett, and Charles Burdett from the Institute of Languages, Cultures, and Societies (School of Advanced Study, University of London).
We also recommend a white paper on AI in translation and language services by the Chartered Institute of Linguists.
This piece was published on the University Council For Languages website on April 26th 2024.
You can read the story in full here.