人工智能让学习外语变得不再那么必要 | 经济学人文化
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Culture | Johnson
文化 | 约翰逊专栏
英文部分选自经济学人20230819期文化板块
Culture | Johnson
文化 | 约翰逊专栏
AI could make it less necessary to learn foreign languages
人工智能让学习外语变得不再那么必要
That is good news for travellers, bad news for soulful connection
这为旅行者带来了便利，却不利于心灵的沟通
On holiday, many will find themselves in places where they do not speak the language. Once upon a time, they might have carried a phrasebook. The rise of English has made that less necessary. But most people—at least seven of the world’s eight billion—still do not speak English. That leaves options like pantomime, a willingness to be surprised by what arrives at dinner—or, increasingly, technology.
许多人假期出游，并不懂当地的语言。以前，他们可能会携带一本常用语手册。而英语的普及使得这种需求变得不那么必要。但全球80亿人中，至少70亿都还不会说英语。这样一来，人们就只能选择通过肢体语言来表达，心甘情愿地接受端上桌的未知晚餐，或越来越频繁地采用技术手段。
More and more people are using simple, free tools, not only to decode text but also to speak. With these apps’ conversation mode, you talk into a phone and a spoken translation is heard moments later; the app can also listen for another language and produce a translation in yours.
越来越多的人开始使用简易、免费的翻译工具，不仅用于翻译文本，还用于口语表达。在这些翻译应用的“对话模式”下，你对着手机说话，片刻后就能听到语音翻译。这些应用也可以接收别人说的话，并将其翻译为你能听懂的语种。
You may still get a surprise or two. Google Translate may be the best-known name in machine translation, but it often blunders. Take “my wife is gluten-free,” the kind of thing you might say at a restaurant abroad. In French or Italian, Google Translate renders this as “my wife is without gluten”—true to the words rather than the meaning. DeepL, a rival, does better, offering various options, most of them along the correct lines.
你可能仍会遇到一两个小错误。谷歌翻译应该是机器翻译领域最广为人知的产品，但它经常出错。以你在国外餐厅可能会说的一句话——“my wife is gluten-free（我的妻子不吃谷蛋白）”为例。将该句子翻译成法语或意大利语时，谷歌翻译会忠实于字面而非含义，例如将其译为“我的妻子不含麸质蛋白”。而其竞品“DeepL”在传递语义方面则做得更好，其提供了更多样化的翻译结果，且大多数都译得更为准确。
The best tool may not be a translation app at all. Though not marketed for the purpose, Chatgpt, agenerative ai system that churns out prose according to users’ prompts, is multilingual. Rather than entering an exact text to translate, users can tell Chatgpt to “write a message in Spanish to a waiter that my wife and I would like the tasting menu, but that she is gluten-free, so we would like substitutions for anything that has gluten.” And out pops a perfect paragraph, including the way Spanish-speakers actually say “my wife is gluten-free”: mi esposa es celíaca. It is a paraphrase rather than a translation, more like having a native-speaking dinner companion than an automated interpreter.
最好的辅助工具其实不是翻译软件。尽管Chatgpt的定位并非是一款翻译软件，但这款人工智能生成系统具备多种语言系统，能根据使用者的简单提示给出大篇文字。使用者无需将具体内容输入进行翻译，只需要告诉Chatgpt“用西语转告服务生，我和我的妻子需要一份品鉴菜单，她不能吃谷蛋白，因此我们需要麸质蛋白的替代品。”之后下方就会蹦出一段恰当的文字描述，包括西班牙语中对“我的妻子对麸质蛋白忌口”最准确的说法：mi esposa es celíaca。这是一种释义而非直译，与其说是有一个自动翻译器，不如说是桌上有了一名母语者同行。
Travel has long been a motivator for study—unless people start to feelai tools offer a good-enough service. Some are concerned that apps are turning language acquisition into a dwindling pursuit. Douglas Hofstadter, a polyglot and polymath writer, has argued that something profound will vanish when people talk through machines. He describes giving a halting, difficult speech in Mandarin, which required a lot of work but offered a sense of accomplishment at the end. Who would boast of taking a helicopter to the top of Mount Everest?
一直以来，旅行都是学习的动力，直至人们开始发觉人工智能辅助工具已经足够好用。有的人担心，这些软件会让学习语言的人越来越少。道格拉斯·霍夫斯塔特（Douglas Hofstadter）精通多种语言，是一名学富五车的作家，他认为随着人们通过机器进行对话，语言背后的深刻性也在消弭。他描述道，磕磕巴巴地用普通话完成一段佶屈聱牙的讲话需要大量的准备工作，但完成后会带来极大的成就感。谁会为坐着直升机登上珠穆朗玛峰而倍感自豪呢？
Others are less worried. Most people do not move abroad or have the kind of sustained contact with a foreign culture that requires them to put in the work to become fluent. Nor do most people learn languages for the purpose of humanising themselves or training their brains. On their holiday, they just want a beer and the spaghetti carbonara without incident (and sometimes without gluten).
其他人没那么担忧。毕竟大多数人并不会移民国外，也不会长期接触外国文化，因而也就无须为追求讲一口流畅的外语而付出努力。大部分人学外语也并不是为了提升文化素养或锻炼大脑，他们只是想要在度假时能顺顺利利地点一杯啤酒或是一盘意大利培根奶油面（如果忌口麸质蛋白也能表达明白）。
Asai translation becomes an even more popular labour-saving tool, people will split into two groups. There will be those who want to stretch their minds, immerse themselves in other cultures or force their thinking into new pathways. This lot will still take on language study, often aided by technology. Others will look at learning a new language with a mix of admiration and puzzlement, as they might with extreme endurance sports: “Good for you, if that’s your thing, but a bit painful for my taste.”
随着人工智能翻译变成越来越流行的省力工具，人们将会分成两类。一些人想要拓展思维，而主动沉浸到其他文化中去，或者迫使自己用新的方式思考。这些人依旧会学习语言，只是多了科技的辅助。其他人看待语言学习会带着钦佩和不解的复杂情感，就像人们对待极限耐力运动那样：“如果你喜欢，那太棒了，但这对我来说有点痛苦。”
7-This is largely an Anglophone problem, since native English-speakers miss out on the benefits of language-learning most acutely. In many countries, including Britain and America, schools’ and universities’ foreign-language departments have been closing. (The British government recently devoted a modest fund to trying to get more secondary-school pupils to study foreign languages.) In the rest of the rich world, there is one thriving language that people still study: English. And in poorer countries, many people are multilingual as a matter of course; Africans and Indians learn languages because they are surrounded by them.
这个问题很大程度上是对英语母语者而言的，他们从外语学习中获益最少。在包括英国和美国在内的很多国家，中小学和大学的外语院系都陆续关门（英国政府最近拨款了一点资金，试图让更多中学生学习外语）。在其他发达国家，人们依旧在学习一种流行的语言：英语。而在相对贫穷的国家中，很多人本身就是多语言使用者；非洲人和印度人要学习多种语言，这是因为他们就身处多语环境。
But a focus on the learner alone misses the fundamentally social nature of language. It is a bit like analysing the benefits of close relationships to heart-health but overlooking the inherent value of those bonds themselves. When you try to ask directions in broken Japanese or mangle a joke in halting German, you are making direct contact with someone. And when you speak a language well enough to tell a story with perfect timing or put subtle shading on an argument, that connection is more profound still. The best relationships do not require an intermediary.
但是，只关注学习者，会忽略语言本质的社会属性。这就有点像分析亲密关系对心脏健康的好处时忽视了亲密关系本身的内在价值。当你用不成句的日语问路，或者磕磕绊绊地用德语讲了个不成功的笑话，你是在和人直接接触。如果你精通一门语言，用这门语言讲故事可以完美把控节奏，或者在论述时讲出微妙差异，这种联系会更加深刻。完美的关系是不需要中间人的。
翻译组：
Xiao，富春江小翻译
Lavender，不会做模特的追星女孩不是好的话剧爱好者
Albert，热爱笔译的摸鱼人。希望一直有求知和宽阔的心。
雪迪，开眼看世界
Constance，痛终有时，爱必将至
Colin，男，崇拜科比的一枚小翻译
Dossver，男，是错永不对真永是真
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观点|评论|思考
Very，男，电气民工，经济学人资浅爱好者
让我以这句著名的论断作为开场白：语言的边界就是思想的边界。我又做了一点点的逻辑推理：如果思想的表达被某些语言的模型固化或者依赖于某些模型时，那么我们的思想本身是否也是被束缚于这些模型呢？
这也应该是一个事实：没有任何两个人的语言表达是相同的，因为没有两个人的思想是相同的，但是当我们的表达趋同时，我们是否意识到了，我们的思想也在趋同。显然这种趋同的思想是人为的结果，现在有个名词出现的频率很高——信息茧房，显然信息茧房就是最初级的思想趋同的一种模式。
我们再进一步推断一下，谁是上述场景的最终获益者？我觉得只有那一类人，答案不言而喻。但显然人类的出现恰恰不是趋同的结果，而是变异或者说基因百花齐放趋异的结果，我们在更多依赖于便利设施、信息获取的方式的同时，是否意识到，我们不需要意见领袖，我们不需要主流思想，我们只需要独立思想，独立的思想才是通向事实和真相的唯一道路。
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