For a long time we have known other countries mostly through our own language. AI is starting to change that. Why we built West & East and West & East Trivia: to hear another society in its own voice, and to take another look at ourselves.
For a long time, getting to know another country has meant going through our own language first.
The news gets translated, the information gets sorted, the stories get explained, and only then do they reach us.
There's nothing wrong with that. Language has always been one of the most important bridges between people.
But it also means that the other country we see is often a version that has already been reworked by our own language and our own society.
For most of history, there was little anyone could do about it.
An ordinary person can't read another country's newspapers every day, scroll its social media, or keep up with what people there are talking about. Language is a barrier, and translating and sorting it all takes enormous time.
So we usually came to know the outside world only through the language we were most comfortable in.
What AI is starting to change
AI is beginning to shift that.
Today it's much easier to read content in another language, to translate on the spot, and to set large amounts of material from different sources side by side.
That means a person can keep learning about their own culture and society while also starting to look more directly at something else:
how people in another society see their own lives.
What they're talking about.
What they're arguing over.
What they love, what they complain about, what they miss.
Sometimes these things tell us more about a real society than any neatly written "country overview."
Two small experiments
Several of our recent small projects started from this idea.
we.woodlogos.net (West & East) is one of them.
We want to record some of what is happening in Chinese and American society, and not just tell you "what happened," but also look at how people there are actually talking about it.
Another is West & East Trivia, which we built earlier inside 16words.
It asks questions in both directions: a Chinese question can come with English answer choices, and an English question can come with Chinese ones. It isn't really a language test. The questions are about the everyday knowledge, expressions, and culture that you only tend to pick up by actually living there.
One is for reading. One is a game.
But the idea behind them is the same:
we hope people can get to know others not only through their own language, but as close as possible to the way those others express themselves.
Not a cure for bias, just a thinner wall
Of course, we don't believe this will make prejudice disappear.
Most of the time, the lopsided impressions people have of another country don't come from ill will.
Often it's simply that we see too little, and what we do see always comes to us through a layer of distance.
If that layer can get a little thinner, and an ordinary person has more chances to hear another society in its own voice, maybe we'll understand each other a little better.
And interestingly, along the way we may also come to see ourselves again.
When we start looking at our own culture and our own society from another angle, many things we've long taken for granted become worth thinking about again.
Why we're doing this
That may be the reason we want to do these things now.
Not to tell anyone how they should see the world.
Only in the hope that one day, it will be easier for us to hear each other.
To understand others in their own words.
And to take another look at ourselves.