Museum of Languages (In-Person)

We are approaching a tipping point for language.

As machine translation makes communication effortless, we must ask what kind of understanding it delivers. Do ideas pass between us intact, or are they subtly thinned of voice, texture, and intent?

Will languages fade as translation becomes seamless, or proliferate into a world of local idiolects where machines mediate between ever more diverse forms of speech? Will we all speak one language, or each our own and how will we preserve the vast cultural treasury of those we already have?

The Museum of Languages imagines a living space for this uncertainty: a place to celebrate linguistic diversity, to question what may be lost or transformed, to help understand the future of language in the age of AI and to decide how we should respond to this challenge AI poses to languages, communication and meaning.

The event will have talks on three topics:

1. Translation: what does translation mean in the age of AI; does AI help, or destroy, our attempt to translate, will it allow us to talk across languages or denude our communication of meaning!
2. Diversity: are we doomed to have just one language in the future, will AI accelerate language extinction, or could it do the opposite, allow us all to speak different languages at the cost of making language cultureless.
3. Museums: how can we preserve or celebrate languages, what might a museum or gallery of languages look like; can we preserve a language through translation, what do the languages of the past mean now.

This is a public event. All welcome.

Conor Houghton - Associate Professor in Computer Science

Emmanouil Tranos - Professor of Quantitative Human Geography

Jim Evans - Research Partnerships and Engagement Associate

Please look at our Code of Conduct for all online and in-person events organised by the JGI.

This event is part of Bristol Data Week 2026, organised by the Jean Golding Institute taking please from Monday 1 June – Friday 5 June 2026. Bristol Data Week is a university-wide umbrella event bringing together academia, industry, community organisations, policy makers and the public to explore the power of data science and AI in addressing real-world challenges.

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Host or Publisher Jean Golding Institute at the University of Bristol