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With new technology, learning foreign languages will become less essential.
新技术让学习外语变得不再那么必要（上）
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.
许多人外出度假，却不懂当地的语言。在过去，他们可能会随身携带一本常用语手册，而英语的兴起使这种手册变得不再那么必要。
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.
但大多数人（全世界80亿人中至少就有70亿人）仍然不会说英语。如此一来，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"盲盒"晚餐--或者愈发频繁地借助技术手段。
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单、免费的（翻译）工具，不仅可以用来翻译文本，还可以用于口语表达。在这些应用程序的对话模式下，你可以对着手机说话，片刻之后就会听到语音翻译，这种应用还可以接收另一种语言，然后转换成你自己的语种。
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.
不过，有时候你可能还是会遇到一两个小错误。谷歌翻译可能是机器翻译领域最广为人知的产品，但它经常出错。举个例子，你在国外餐厅可能会说的一句话--"my wife is gluten-free（我妻子不吃麸质蛋白）"。如果将这句话翻译成法语或意大利语，谷歌翻译的结果是"我的妻子不含麸质蛋白"，虽然这样字面意思是对的，但实际语义却不对。
DeepL, a rival, does better, offering various options, most of them along the correct lines. The best tool may not be a translation app at all. Though not marketed for the purpose, ChatGPT, a generative AI system that churns out prose according to users' prompts, is multilingual.
谷歌翻译的竞品DeepL表现更好，它提供了多种选择，大多数都是正确的。不过，最好的工具可能压根儿就不是翻译软件。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。
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."
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，但她不能吃谷蛋白，因此我们需要麸质蛋白的替代品"。
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.
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。与其说是翻译，不如说是意译，更像是有了一个说母语的晚餐伴侣，而不是自动翻译。
Travel has long been a motivator for study-unless people start to feel AI tools offer a good-enough service. Some are concerned that apps are turning language acquisition into a dwindling pursuit.
一直以来，旅行都是学习的动力，直至人们开始发觉AI辅助工具已经足够好用。有的人则担心，应用程序正在将习得语言变成一种日益衰微的追求。
