Languages have always had TWO goals: to enable communication and to disable communication. Languages often have a very strong group mentality. Just compare English in different countries or even within a country in different social groups. There are different words for things, or words that exist in different countries/groups but mean totally different things. In other words, if you say X and mean Y, then you are in our group (of friends, etc), if you mean Z, then you are from another group. People are very inventive changing the meaning of words or coming up with new words that mean... who knows what.

I believe that this will be possible in time but as others have said, look at the mess that google can make of things. I don't think that in the foreseeable future we will see a 100 accurate translating software. Will it be able to produce appropriate stress? In a simple sentence like "I asked you to buy me a newspaper" it can be stressed at least 4 different ways to give it four different meanings! There may be a place for it, but real voice to voice communication can't be beaten! Best wishes Bob

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的确，实时翻译软件的确方便了不同语言使用者之间的沟通交流，但那始终只是一种工具，而人与人之间的的沟通最重要的情感交流。同样一句话，在不同场景，或不同的情绪状态下，含义是不一样的，甚至截然不同。翻译软件再智能也很难读懂人们的反话吧。

Well (why start with well?) ,I saw a news ITEM A few days ago,it's about a company WHICH has invented a kind of machine,which can translate many languages immediately by just hearing people talk!! I started to think that i love learning languages because i want to make friends from different countries,but if we have this machine, we won't need to face the situation when we don't understand what people talking about. Not sure if it's a great invention? Will languages become useless in THE future?