Once the stuff of science fiction, technology that enables people to talk using different languages is now here. But how effective is it?

曾经是科幻小说里的东西，现在可以让人们用不同的语言交流。但是效果如何呢?

Noise, Alex Waibel tells me, is one of the major challenges that artificial speech translation has to meet. A device may be able to recognise speech in a laboratory, or a meeting room, but will struggle to cope with the kind of background noise I can hear in my office surrounding Professor Waibel as he speaks to me from Kyoto station in Japan. I'm struggling to follow him in English, on a scratchy line that reminds me we are nearly 10,000 kilometres apart – and that distance is still an obstacle to communication even if you're speaking the same language, as we are. We haven't reached the future yet. If we had, Waibel would have been able to speak more comfortably in his native German and I would have been able to hear his words in English.

Alex Waibel告诉我，噪音是人工语音翻译必须面对的主要挑战之一。一种设备或许能够识别实验室或会议室里的语音，但它将难以应对我在办公室里听到的那种背景噪音，当时怀贝尔教授正从日本京都站对我讲话。我努力用英语跟上他的节奏，刺耳的声音提醒我，我们相距近一万公里——即使你和我们说的是同一种语言，这个距离仍然是交流的障碍。我们还没有到达未来。如果我们这样做了，威贝尔就能更自如地说他的母语德语，我也能听到他用英语说的话。

At Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, where he is a professor of computer science, Waibel and his colleagues already give lectures in German that their students can follow in English via an electronic translator. The system generates text that students can read on their laptops or phones, so the process is somewhat similar to subtitling. It helps that lecturers speak clearly, don't have to compete with background chatter, and say much the same thing each year.

在卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院(Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)， Waibel是一名计算机科学教授，他和他的同事们已经用德语讲课，学生们可以通过电子翻译器用英语听。该系统生成学生可以在笔记本电脑或手机上阅读的文本，所以这个过程有点类似于字幕。这有助于演讲者说话清晰，不必与背景闲聊竞争，并且每年讲的内容大致相同。

The idea of artificial speech translation has been around for a long time. Douglas Adams' science fiction novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, published in 1979, featured a life form called the 'Babel fish' which, when placed in the ear, enabled a listener to understand any language in the universe. It came to represent one of those devices that technology enthusiasts dream of long before they become practically realisable, like TVs flat enough to hang on walls: objects that we once could only dream of having but that are now commonplace. Now devices that look like prototype Babel fish have started to appear, riding a wave of advances in artificial translation and voice recognition.

人工语音翻译的想法已经存在很长时间了。道格拉斯·亚当斯(Douglas Adams) 1979年出版的科幻小说《银河系漫游指南》(The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy)中，有一种名为“巴别鱼”的生命形式，把它放在耳朵里，听者就能听懂宇宙中的任何语言。它代表了一种技术爱好者在实际实现之前很久就梦想的设备，就像可以挂在墙上的电视一样:我们曾经只能梦想拥有的东西，现在已经司空见惯了。如今，借助人工翻译和语音识别技术的进步，看起来像巴别鱼原型的设备开始出现。

At this stage, however, they seem to be regarded as eye-catching novelties rather than steps towards what Waibel calls 'making a language-transparent society'. They tend to be domestic devices or applications suitable for hotel check-ins, for example, providing a practical alternative to speaking traveller's English. The efficiency of the translator is less important than the social function. However, 'Professionals are less inclined to be patient in a conversation,' founder and CEO at Waverly Labs, Andrew Ochoa, observes. To redress this, Waverly is now preparing a new model for professional applications, which entails performance improvements in speech recognition, translation accuracy and the time it takes to deliver the translated speech.

然而，在这个阶段，它们似乎被视为吸引眼球的新奇事物，而不是朝着威贝尔所说的“建立一个语言透明的社会”迈出的一步。它们往往是适合酒店入住的家用设备或应用程序，例如，提供了一种实用的替代说旅行者英语的选择。译者的工作效率不如其社会功能重要。然而，Waverly Labs的创始人兼首席执行长安德鲁•奥乔亚(Andrew Ochoa)说，“专业人士在谈话中不太愿意保持耐心。”为了解决这个问题，Waverly现在正在为专业应用准备一种新的模型，这需要在语音识别、翻译准确性和交付翻译语音所需的时间方面进行性能改进。

For a conversation, both speakers need to have devices called Pilots (translator earpieces) in their ears. 'We find that there's a barrier with sharing one of the earphones with a stranger,' says Ochoa. That can't have been totally unexpected. The problem would be solved if earpiece translators became sufficiently prevalent that strangers would be likely to already have their own in their ears. Whether that happens, and how quickly, will probably depend not so much on the earpieces themselves, but on the prevalence of voice-controlled devices and artificial translation in general.

为了进行对话，说话的双方都需要在耳朵里戴上一种叫做pilot(翻译耳机)的设备。奥乔亚说:“我们发现与陌生人共用一个耳机存在一个障碍。”这不可能完全出乎意料。如果耳机翻译变得足够普遍，那么陌生人可能已经在他们的耳朵里有了自己的耳机翻译，这个问题就会得到解决。这种情况是否会发生，以及多快发生，可能在很大程度上不是取决于耳机本身，而是取决于语音控制设备和人工翻译的普及程度。

Waibel highlights the significance of certain Asian nations, noting that voice translation has really taken off in countries such as Japan with a range of systems. There is still a long way to go, though. A translation system needs to be simultaneous, like the translator's voice speaking over the foreign politician being interviewed on the TV, rather than in sections that oblige speakers to pause after every few remarks and wait for the translation to be delivered. It needs to work offline, for situations where internet access isn't possible, and to address apprehensions about the amount of private speech data accumulating in the cloud, having been sent to servers for processing.

Waibel强调了某些亚洲国家的重要性，他指出语音翻译在日本等拥有一系列系统的国家已经真正起飞。不过，还有很长的路要走。翻译系统需要是同步的，就像翻译人员的声音在电视上采访外国政治家时，而不是在每隔几句话就迫使发言者停下来等待翻译的部分。它需要离线工作，在不可能上网的情况下，并解决对云中积累的私人言论数据量的担忧，这些数据已被发送到服务器进行处理。

Systems not only need to cope with physical challenges such as noise, they will also need to be socially aware by addressing people in the right way. Some cultural traditions demand solemn respect for academic status, for example, and it is only polite to respect this. Etiquette-sensitive artificial translators could relieve people of the need to know these differing cultural norms. At the same time, they might help to preserve local customs, slowing the spread of habits associated with international English, such as its readiness to get on first-name terms.

系统不仅需要应对噪音等物理挑战，还需要通过正确的方式解决人们的问题，从而具有社会意识。例如，一些文化传统要求对学术地位给予庄严的尊重，尊重这一点是礼貌的。对礼仪敏感的人工翻译可以减轻人们了解这些不同文化规范的需要。与此同时，它们可能有助于保存当地习俗，减缓与国际英语相关的习惯的传播，比如它愿意直呼其名。

Professors and other professionals will not outsource language awareness to software, though. If the technology matures into seamless, ubiquitous artificial speech translation, it will actually add value to language skills. Whether it will help people conduct their family lives or relationships is open to question – though one noteworthy possibility is that it could overcome the language barriers that often arise between generations after migration, leaving children and their grandparents without a shared language.

不过，教授和其他专业人士不会把语言意识外包给软件。如果这项技术成熟到无缝，无处不在的人工语音翻译，它实际上会增加语言技能的价值。它是否会帮助人们处理家庭生活或人际关系还有待商榷——尽管一个值得注意的可能性是，它可以克服移民后几代人之间经常出现的语言障碍，让孩子和他们的祖父母没有共同的语言。

Whatever uses it is put to, though, it will never be as good as the real thing. Even if voice- morphing technology simulates the speaker's voice, their lip movements won't match, and they will look like they are in a dubbed movie. The contrast will underline the value of shared languages, and the value of learning them. Sharing a language can promote a sense of belonging and community, as with the international scientists who use English as a lingua franca, where their predecessors used Latin. Though the practical need for a common language will diminish, the social value of sharing one will persist. And software will never be a substitute for the subtle but vital understanding that comes with knowledge of a language.

然而，不管它被用于什么用途，它永远不会像真正的东西那样好。即使语音变形技术模拟了说话人的声音，他们的嘴唇运动也不会匹配，他们看起来就像在配音电影里一样。这种对比将强调共享语言的价值，以及学习这些语言的价值。共享一种语言可以促进归属感和社区意识，就像使用英语作为通用语的国际科学家一样，他们的前辈使用拉丁语。虽然对通用语言的实际需求将会减少，但共享一种语言的社会价值将会持续存在。而且，软件永远无法取代语言知识带来的微妙但至关重要的理解。