By Professor Paul Bishop

Abercromby Street in the Calton district of Glasgow is home to the Calton Weavers’ Cemetry, an historical burial ground established in 1787 by the Calton Incorporation of Weavers. Pride of place in the cemetery is a monument to the “Martyrs,” or those Weavers who were killed during the strike of 1787.
 

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, weaving had been the mainstay of the local economy. In 1786, however, disaster struck: the East India Company was now importing cheaper Indian muslins, leading to a drop in the price of Scottish cloth — and a cut in weavers’ wages of some six to seven shillings.
 

When a further round of wage cuts was announced by manufacturers in the summer of 1787, the weavers decided to strike — and a bitter dispute began, which dragged on for several months. At one point, the military was called in; and soldiers fired into the crowd, shooting dead three weavers and mortally wounding three others. By these and other means, the strike was eventually “broken” — but eventually, not just the strike, but the entire weaving economy collapsed.
 

The cause of the weavers was just, noble, and ultimately — tragic. For the weavers, it turned out, were on the wrong side of history: trade patterns, global economics, and in turn technology would undermine a craft that had been practised for centuries.
 

I cannot but help think of the brave weavers of Calton when reading some of the responses made by linguists to the development of AI (Artificial Intelligence). This is particularly the case, moreover, in academic circles. Across the board, it seems, academics have expressed dismay at how students are increasingly using such AI tools as ChatGPT to produce better quality essays and translation. Or, in other words, to cheat.
 

But is it cheating, though? Clearly, submitting in one’s own name work for assessment that has been produced by someone (or, in the case of AI, something) else is wrong. But rather than “cracking down” on students and issuing YouTube warnings about the inadmissibility of plagiarism and its disciplinary consequences, should academics in general and linguists in particular ask themselves: are we missing a trick?
 

After all, we would encourage students to use a dictionary, including such online dictionaries as Linguee, which offer examples in real life contexts of how words or expressions are used. In fact, “dictionary skills” are usually regarded as part and parcel of the skill-set associated with modern languages.
 

So ought we not to be encouraging students to explore the use of such AI tools as ChatGPT and other translation software, in order to produce better translations without having guiltily to hide the sources used to produce them?
 

For some, this suggestion is perceived as being the ultimate betrayal; but hang on, the point of languages is communication, and surely it is this aspect of modern languages that should be cultivated and enhanced as responding to their raison d’être in the contemporary curriculum?
 

In turn, this might lead us to ponder whether — at least, in part — the decline in the uptake of modern languages at schools and universities is connected with the huge emphasis placed on assessment (almost, one might sometimes think, for assessment’s sake itself), rather than on how fluency in a language can unlock the culture, literature, and ideas expressed using that language.
 

And there is surely another, pragmatic reason for why linguists should rethink their approach to AI. This reason is intrinstic to the technology of AI: namely, its ability to learn, to improve, and to get better. (All characteristics, one might think, that one should wish to inculcate in human leaners!) A few years ago, it was possible to run a phrase through Google Translate and laugh at what emerged. Nowadays, this is increasingly less the case — and the trajectory of the quality of AI-produced translations is only going to go in one direction. And that is upward.
 

A case in point: the thought of the German vitalist philosopher Ludwig Klages is notorious for the grammatical complexity of his writing, and the absence of a reliable translation of his key work, Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele, has been a major factor in his neglect by other philosophers. Recently, however, I was shown an AI translation of the entire work, which was not just acceptable but in many respects remarkably impressive, and there are plans to make this version openly available.
 

As a linguist, I cannot but help think that this kind of use of AI is a “good thing,” and something the languages community — academic and commercial alike — should warmly welcome. The world is changing, and the discipline of modern languages must change with it, or risk simply dying out. For what matters in translation, surely, is not the simple mechanics of translation, but the act of communication and the authenticity of cultural exchange it can promote.
 

Nowadays, no one would decide that a secure career choice would be to become — a weaver, however much one admires the enormous bravery and determination with which the Calton weavers tried to defend their trade, their skills, and their livelihood. And in the course of the nineteenth century, those human weavers would eventually be replaced by automated machines, until the point where the process of industrialisation itself was in turn no longer economically viable.
 

So let us learn from the weavers, and begin to think about how the discipline of modern languages can be adapted to the real-world challenges its practitioners — and the practitioners of the future, currently known as our learners and students — will inevitably face. If this means rethinking the curriculum (and, in particular, rethinking and correcting the overemphasis on assessment), so be it. Whether artificial or human, let’s decide as a community to promote intelligence, because if we don’t, the discipline of FMLs will — as has already begun to happen, some might say — simply disappear.
 

Note: For further information on the Calton Burial Ground, see E. Williamson et al., The Buildings of Scotland: Glasgow (Penguin, 1990); and Calton Heritage Trail (Glasgow City Council, 2011).

Professor Paul Bishop MA DPhil DipTrans FCIL is Honorary Professorial Research Fellow in the School of Modern Languages & Cultures at the University of Glasgow and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists.

For more on Paul see his profile here. 

Views expressed on CIOL Voices are those of the writer and may not represent those of the wider membership or CIOL.