as much as it is technically possible to easily and fairly accurately translate most major languages on the fly these days, and for short (read: a week or less) trips it's certainly more efficient to do so, for anything beyond a couple weeks of travel, or if you spend any amount of time around people of different nationalities/ethniticies, and especially for those who live in countries whose dominant language is not their own, it's absolutely worth learning the language.
can you accomplish most basic survival tasks without fluency in the local language? absolutely!
can you effectively connect with people and build relationships and community? outside of expat communities, almost certainly not.
and even if you manage to find enough locals that speak your language, or you're able to communicate through a third common language (english, french, etc), it will never be the same quality or ease of communication as it would be if you spoke their heart language fluently.
one thing that i've learned from speaking to people from many different languages is that speaking to a person in their home language has a different emotional weight than speaking to them in another language, even if they speak it very fluently.
this is of course anecdotal, but the number of times i've been able to instantly make friendships with strangers simply because i spoke their language rather than trying to speak to them in english or french or what have you probably counts for something.
language is of course deeply connected to culture as well - having a connection, or even any level of interest in a person's language instantly builds a foundation for further relationship in future.
certain languages have a reputation for being difficult; whether deserved or otherwise, if that's how the general population perceives them, it's virtually impossible to change their opinions.
one's language is closely linked to one's identity.
as such, native speakers of "difficult" languages understand that for outsiders to learn their language, it must have taken tremendous amounts of time and effort, and the majority of people around the world really appreciate that.
another good reason to learn languages is minority and non-standard language.
anything non-standard, and anything sufficiently unusual, often is simply not well enough documented to be able to get by with digital resources.
for many
we live in an era in which it's easier than it ever has been to convey information, and yet perhaps due to the sheer volume of information that we consume daily the quality of said information often leaves much to be desired.
it's easy to overlook the importance of actually speaking to people, now that so many interactions that historically would have been done in person have been replaced with online communication where increasingly the other end of that communication isn't even a human anymore.
now without discussing the pros and cons of this reality too much, suffice to say that the lack of human interaction is the root issue to many modern struggles that we face.
the more languages we speak, and the less we rely on digital translation to communicate with people from different backgrounds and cultures, the more understanding of each other we can become. it's incredibly difficult to be a prejudiced polyglot.
- native speakers are not teachers