LOTE
Languages Other Than English Here is the English translation of the statement: Is learning a foreign languages superfluous thanks to good translation tools and AI? No! 30 March 2026 Dear colleagues, Recently I have been receiving press enquiries with increasing frequency suggesting that technological advances have made learning foreign languages unnecessary. The question posed is to what extent pupils' motivation to learn a foreign language is diminished by ever-improving translation tools — or whether, on the other hand, these tools might actually be what sparks interest in foreign languages in the first place. My usual response is that this topic matters deeply to us as a philologists' association, because it ultimately touches on our fundamental humanistic understanding of education. For Wilhelm von Humboldt, for example, learning foreign languages was vitally important because he saw it as a way of getting to know other cultures, and thereby advancing the individual's formative engagement with both themselves and the world. Through language learning — in his day, especially the classical languages — he wanted to enable the individual to "connect as much of the world as possible as closely as possible to themselves." A beautiful idea, and one that captures the humanistic approach to language learning. Foreign language learning is therefore about far more than translation. That is precisely why it remains irreplaceable as part of school education, regardless of how excellent translation tools…