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Johnson
约翰逊专栏
Yo hablo AI
我会讲AI语
With new technology, learning foreign languages will become less essential.
有了新技术，学习外语将变得不那么必要。
On holiday, many will find themselves in places where they do not speak the language.
在度假时，许多人会发现自己身处语言不通的地方。
Once upon a time, they might have carried a phrasebook.
曾经他们可能随身携带一本常用语手册。
The rise of English has made that less necessary.
英语的崛起使这种手册变得不那么必要。
But most people—at least seven of the world’s eight billion—still do not speak English.
但大多数人--全世界80亿人中至少有70亿人--仍然不会说英语。
That leaves options like pantomime, a willingness to be surprised by what arrives at dinner—or, increasingly, technology.
这些人有一些选择，比如演哑剧、愿意接受端上餐桌的东西给自己带来的惊喜，或者一个日益常见的选择：使用科技。
More and more people are using simple, free tools, not only to decode text but also to speak.
越来越多的人正在使用简单、免费的工具，不仅可以解码文本，还可以用于口语表达。
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.
在这些应用程序的对话模式下，你可以对着手机说话，片刻之后就会听到翻译出来的语句，这种应用还可以倾听另一种语言，然后翻译成你的语言。
You may still get a surprise or two.
有了翻译软件，你可能还是会得到一两个惊喜。
Google Translate may be the best-known name in machine translation, but it often blunders.
谷歌翻译可能是机器翻译领域最广为人知的名字，但它经常出错。
Take “my wife is gluten-free,” the kind of thing you might say at a restaurant abroad.
以“我妻子不吃麸质”为例，你在国外的餐馆里可能会说这句话。
In French or Italian, Google Translate renders this as “my wife is without gluten”—true to the words rather than the meaning.
翻译成法语或意大利语，谷歌翻译的结果是“我的妻子没有麸质”，字面意思是对的，但实际意思不对。
DeepL, a rival, does better, offering various options, most of them along the correct lines.
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。
The best tool may not be a translation app at all.
但是最好的工具可能根本不是翻译应用程序。
Though not marketed for the purpose, ChatGPT, a generative AI system that churns out prose according to users’ prompts, is multilingual.
生成式人工智能系统ChatGPT可以根据用户的提示词生成大量文本，尽管翻译并非其卖点，但ChatGPT确实精通多种语言。
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.”
用户不是输入准确的文本让它翻译，而是让它“用西班牙语给服务员写一条信息，告诉服务员我和我妻子想要品尝菜单（各种小份菜集合），但我妻子不吃麸质，所以希望把含麸质的菜换成别的”。
And out pops a perfect paragraph, including the way Spanish-speakers actually say “my wife is gluten-free”: mi esposa es celíaca.
然后就跳出了一段完美的文字，包括说西班牙语的人会怎样表达“我的妻子不吃麸质”：mi esposa es celíaca。
It is a paraphrase rather than a translation, more like having a native-speaking dinner companion than an automated interpreter.
这更像改写而非翻译，更像是有一位母语人士和你一起用餐，而不是有一名自动化的口译员。
Travel has long been a motivator for study—unless people start to feel AI tools offer a good-enough service.
旅行一直是学习语言的动力，除非人们开始觉得AI工具的服务已经足够好。
Some are concerned that apps are turning language acquisition into a dwindling pursuit.
一些人担心，应用程序正在将习得语言变成一种日益衰微的追求。
Douglas Hofstadter, a polyglot and polymath writer, has argued that something profound will vanish when people talk through machines.
精通多种语言且通晓多门学科的作家侯世达认为，当人们通过机器进行交谈时，一些深刻的东西会消失。
He describes giving a halting, difficult speech in Mandarin, which required a lot of work but offered a sense of accomplishment at the end.
他说他曾用普通话很艰难地发表了一段磕磕巴巴的演讲，这需要付出大量努力，但最后也带来了一种成就感。
Who would boast of taking a helicopter to the top of Mount Everest?
毕竟谁会夸耀自己乘坐直升机登上了珠穆朗玛峰呢？
Others are less worried.
其他人则不那么担心。
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.
大多数人不会移居国外，也不会与外国文化有持续的接触，因此不需要投入大量精力让自己能流利地说外语。
Nor do most people learn languages for the purpose of humanising themselves or training their brains.
大多数人学习语言也不是为了培养自己的人性或训练自己的大脑。
On their holiday, they just want a beer and the spaghetti carbonara without incident (and sometimes without gluten).
他们只想在度假的时候能不出意外地点一杯啤酒和培根蛋酱意大利面(有时也希望不出现麸质)。
As AI translation becomes an even more popular labour-saving tool, people will split into two groups.
随着人工智能翻译成为一种更大众的省力工具，人们将分成两类。
There will be those who want to stretch their minds, immerse themselves in other cultures or force their thinking into new pathways.
一类人想要拓展自己的思维，沉浸在其他文化中，或者强迫自己以新的方式思考。
This lot will still take on language study, often aided by technology.
这些人仍将继续学习语言，通常是用科技进行辅助。
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.”
另一类人会怀着既钦佩又困惑的心情看待外语学习，就像他们对极限耐力运动的看法一样：“如果你喜欢的话，那你挺棒的，但对我来说有点痛苦。”
This is largely an Anglophone problem, since native English-speakers miss out on the benefits of language-learning most acutely.
这在很大程度上是英语文化圈的问题，因为英语母语者最大程度地错过了语言学习的好处。
In many countries, including Britain and America, schools’ and universities’ foreign-language departments have been closing.
在包括英国和美国在内的许多国家，学校和大学的外语系一直在关停。
(The British government recently devoted a modest fund to trying to get more secondary-school pupils to study foreign languages.)
（英国政府最近投入了一笔不多的资金，试图让更多的中学生学习外语。）
In the rest of the rich world, there is one thriving language that people still study: English.
在富裕世界的其他地方，人们仍在学习一种热门的语言：英语。
And in poorer countries, many people are multilingual as a matter of course; Africans and Indians learn languages because they are surrounded by them.
在较贫穷的国家，许多人理所当然地会说多种语言，非洲人和印度人学习多门语言因为他们就生活在多语环境中。
But a focus on the learner alone misses the fundamentally social nature of language.
但是，只关注学习者本身就忽略了语言根本的社交本质。
It is a bit like analysing the benefits of close relationships to heart-health but overlooking the inherent value of those bonds themselves.
这有点像分析亲密关系对心脏健康的好处，但忽视了这些关系本身的内在价值。
When you try to ask directions in broken Japanese or mangle a joke in halting German, you are making direct contact with someone.
当你试图用蹩脚的日语问路，或者用磕磕巴巴的德语讲笑话时，你在和别人直接地接触。
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.
而当你的外语说得足够好，可以恰到好处地讲述一个故事，或者在论述中加入细腻的含义区别，这种与别人的联系就会更加深刻。
The best relationships do not require an intermediary.
最好的人际关系不需要任何中间媒介。
