REFLECTIONS ON THE MULTIPLE LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN ENGLAND AND ALASKA, DIGITAL CONNECTIONS AND ONLINE TRANSLATION SERVICES FOR READING AND LITERACY NEEDS

Technology advancements have enabled communication regardless of language barriers in a variety of languages across countries and states around the world but also within the same country/state due to digital translation applications and advancements in algorithm solutions over the last 45 years. For instance, software applications including translation services make reading documents and general literacy more accessible for all. These developments have enabled communities from different ethnic backgrounds to communicate more efficiently within close proximity as well as at a distance as detailed in Latham (2024 [1]). This paper includes a summary of languages spoken in England and Alaska as a comparative study because they are located in the same hemisphere quarter. There are collectively, approximately, over 86 languages spoken in England and Alaska, however, English is the main language spoken. Over 5 million (approximately 5,249,362) outputs/results were handled during this reflective work. A document can now be translated fairly quickly from one language to other languages within minutes. This hasn’t always been the situation and this reflective paper focuses on this as well as documented evidence of the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the two locations. Achieving a digital connection to communicate information is an aspect of this paper because this links to the 2016 theme of Making Digital Count [2] and can assist in COVID-19 Recovery planning.