AI's Role for Multilingual Interpretation
August 25, 2025
Over sixty years ago, Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan coined the term “global village” as the phrase to describe how electronic communication technologies like television (and eventually the internet) could instantly shrink the world into a collective community. As a philosopher, author and professor at the University of Toronto, McLuhan founded the Centre for Culture and Technology in 1963. As part of the University’s highly interdisciplinary environment, it explored the potential effects of new media technologies.
After the Soviet Union boosted its space program during this same period, the U.S. Department of Defense began exploring ways to ensure information could still be disseminated effectively following a nuclear attack. The ongoing concerns led to the formation of Advanced Research Projects Agency Network called ARPANET. Two decades later, a communications protocol called Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol (TCP/IP) allowed computer networks to talk to each other, hence the birth of the Internet.
McLuhan envisioned a world where the technologies of the electronic age would eliminate the effects of physical distance and allow for an instant sharing of information. This concept highlighted how high-speed media would allow people to interact in new ways with each other’s lives and cultures. In other words, a global village. However, the philosopher’s view was not simply utopian and he predicted it would lead to increased friction and compared today's "electronic age" to a small world of tribal drums interconnected in real time.
Who was the founder of media ecology?
Although the study of media environments was coined as “media ecology” by American media theorist Neil Postman when he established a media ecology PhD program at New York University, McLuhan is still considered to be the founding figure and patron saint of this field of theoretical communication. It is, however, important to note that media ecology is not about whether the technology is GOOD or BAD. Instead, the field encourages critical thinking as to the effects of a new medium and how it enhances aspects of life across the global village while making others obsolete, including the ethical implications that accompany the adoption of any new communication technology.
AI’s Ongoing Role in Multilingual Communication
Based on McLuhan’s concept that the “medium is the message,” media ecologist understand that the medium is never a neutral vessel for information, as it shapes the message perceived by the audience through its structure, sensory bias, and unique limitations. Indeed, Marshall McLuhan and other ecologists would not merely see AI-generative translation as an interpretation tool, but as a powerful new media environment that fundamentally could change how people perceive messages and how people will interact within the confines of the global village.
In example, Marshall McLuhan would likely say that with generative AI the medium can be the message as it delivers real-time content, but that it also generates content independently, which reframes who the author is as well as how others should choose to interpret the message. His ideas on “hot” and “cool” media developed theoretical frameworks to mirror the non-linear, fragmented nature and role of modern electronic media. In fact, McLuhan often appeared in the media he studied (e.g. – television), becoming an example of his own ideas.
A key part of McLuhan’s framework is that the medium, and not the content, will eventually drive change in society. Following this early logic, you could argue that AI-generated multilingual interpretations are not a mere convenience but a powerful new medium that alters human communication. So, an AI language app is a red hot medium because it offers immediate interpretations that require minimal participation. It’s the opposite of a cool medium (like a seminar) that demands active engagement and mental effort to interpret the message.
What Critics Say About AI-Generative Interpretations
Critics of media ecology argue that it oversimplifies the communication process by ignoring both the importance of the content and user agency. Moreover, it promotes technological (or medium) determinism based on an overly simplistic view of a highly complex cultural phenomena like the internet. So, critics say the romanticization of this form of media is meaningless, as it is too abstract and fails to account for power dynamics as equally important factors. Criticisms of AI translation and interpretation of important messages include:
- NEGLECT OF CONTENT: AI-generative apps for language translation focuses more on the medium’s convenience at the expense of the message’s true context, including culturally important nuances.
- HIGH TECH DETERMINISM: AI translations don’t really dictate social structure and cultural values, rather people or social forces shape this ongoing technology used for multilingual communications.
- PASSIVE VIEW OF CULTURALISM: This perspective fails to emphasize a culture’s role in having shaped human life and behavior, and not just some collection of traditions, but as a powerful tool influencing how people think.
- IGNORING POWER DYNAMICS: Formalist criticize McLuhan’s portrayal of individuals living in the global village as passive recipients of media’s messages. This contradicts a more modern understanding of the user's agency.
While McLuhan’s strictest critics point to his “content doesn’t matter” critique, defenders claim many of his critics are simply missing the point that the form of the medium creates a “ground effect” that changes consciousness and regardless of the language. For example, immigrant workers in the U.S. today that do housecleaning can use a multilingual AI app to communicate and exchange messages with a homeowner. Although it provides a very low-level of information complexity, it opens the door for their mutual sharing of multilingual interpretations.
Retribalization of Messaging in the Global Village
Without doubt, McLuhan’s global village described how electronic media would connect the world, make it feel smaller, but leave it more interconnected. So, AI interpretation apps might be seen as an ultimate fulfillment of his prophecies by instantly bridging the communications gap, and while AI may remove language barriers, its presence could alter tribalism. When messages are translated via AI, language quirks and dialects can be homogenized allowing new subgroups within the culture but at the expense of unique linguistic identity.
Multilingual interpretations on an AI-powered app, as opposed to human-to-human simultaneous interpretation, could amplify echo chamber effects. Instead of naturally being exposed to foreign perspectives, audience members could simply have their own biases reinforced through an automated AI-translation app tailored to their worldview. But this would create more of a “monoculture” of thought rather than relying on the differing beliefs across multiple languages that contain many cultural nuances for interpreting the message.
The very idea of using an AI-powered generative app to translate a complex message in another language without human interpreters is a low-participation concept, which was designed to quickly remove language barriers inspite of its disadvantages. If pushed to its extreme, low-participation AI apps could reverse the state of intellectual and cultural dependency. However, people’s reliance on the technology for mass interpretations does risk diminishing human ingenuity, a potential loss of important cultural depth, and the understandings that we exist in the real world today.
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AI-powered interpretation and translation of multiple languages may provide an almost instant solution for low-intensity and low-participation forms of communication. But the delivery of critical messaging like the branding of products and services will be received in a fundamentally different way of thinking. In today’s digital world, organizations who want to remain at the forefront of global online sales must embrace multilingual opportunities to make potential customers feel more included, as it is an important part of an international business’s brand. To learn more about ProLingo’s translation and multi-lingual interpretation services, contact a digital language specialist today at 800-287-9755.
