双语 | 东京大学教授：有了人工智能翻译，还用学英语吗？

人工智能的发展能否取代人工的讨论由来已久。就翻译行业而言，有人说，人工智能会让译者失业；有人说，未来有了强大的翻译软件，人类将无需学习外语……针对这些问题，The Japan News 刊登出一篇名为Can AI replace English education?的文章。文中东京大学教授Tom Gally（汤姆.盖利）就以上问题阐明了自己的观点。

Considerable advances have been made in machine translation that utilizes artificial intelligence, to the point that it now provides the average English skill level of a university graduate.

使用人工智能的机器翻译已经取得很大进展，现在，它能提供相当于大学生的英语水平。

How much might machines be able to achieve in the future?

未来，机器还能做到什么?

We asked an American translator who teaches English at a university.

我们咨询了一名在大学教英语的美国译者。

Tom Gally / Professor at the University of Tokyo

▲汤姆.盖利 / 东京大学教授

Until now, machine translation has been used in place of a dictionary when reading and writing English, but it hasn’t been usable to comprehend or compose larger texts.

目前来看，当人们读写英语时，机器翻译已代替了字典，但它无法理解或编辑更大的文本。

Machine translation using AI made its first appearance in autumn last year, and from my point of view as a translator, it’s not uncommon for English compositions produced by such machine translation to be better than those produced by unaided Japanese students.

使用人工智能的机器翻译于去年秋天首次亮相，作为一名译者，我觉得不足为奇的是，人工智能机器翻译写的英语作文比未经帮助的日本学生写的要好。

However, it also has weak points. It can’t check for mistranslations, mistakes or languages it doesn’t understand.

然而，它也有各种弱点。它无法检查错译、错误或它无法理解的语言。

The accuracy of AI translation is high for relatively formal texts, but it can’t be used for things like more casual texts, conversational text within novels, and song lyrics. Further, it does not translate with a firm grasp of the meaning of the text that it is translating.

对于较为正式的文本而言，人工智能翻译的准确性很高，但是它不能被用于非正式的文本、小说中的对话文本和歌词。此外，它无法准确翻译其正在翻译的文本含义。

For example, translations such as "I was born in 2001, and my younger sister was born in 2000" can occur.

例如，像“我出生于2001年，我的妹妹出生于2000年”这样的翻译也有可能出现。

As can be seen from mistranslation examples such as this, the ability to discriminate correctly when translating such things as words with multiple meanings in context is not fully developed yet. However, as machine translation continues to improve, I think it is just a matter of time before such problems are solved.

从这个错译的例子中可以看出，在翻译文本具有多层意思的词语时，机器翻译正确辨别词义的能力还不完全成熟。然而，随着机器翻译的不断改进，我认为解决这些问题只是时间问题。

Why do we currently teach English to all Japanese children? I think there are two answers to that.

我们现在为何要教所有日本孩子们英语?对此，我认为有两个答案。

The first reason is to build character: English for general education.

第一个理由是塑造人格：通识教育类英语。

By gaining an understanding of overseas politics, economics, society and culture, and drawing comparisons with Japan, they can come to understand Japan better. Similarly, they can understand the Japanese language more deeply by comparing it with English.

通过了解海外政治、经济、社会和文化，并与日本进行比较，他们可以更好地了解日本。同样地，他们也可以通过日语和英语的比较更深入地了解日语。

Using a language requires gaining an understanding of something, and the act of practicing English itself plays a role in intellectual training. These reasons apply not only to English, but could equally apply to other languages such as Chinese, Korean, Spanish or Arabic.

使用一种语言需要掌握对事物的理解力，练习英语本身对智力训练有重要作用。这些原因不仅适用于英语，也适用于其它语言，例如汉语、朝鲜语、西班牙语或阿拉伯语。

The second reason is that English is useful. It has practical uses, and allows global communication.

第二个理由是英语是有用的。它有实际用处，并且使全球沟通成为可能。

There are a wide variety of business uses for English, and it can also be used to communicate with foreigners visiting Japan. It further allows people to gather information from overseas reports. Ever since the Meiji period the original and main aim of Japanese people learning English has been to learn about overseas technologies.

英语有着各种各样的商业用途，它也可以被用来与访日的外国人进行交流。人们可以通过英语从海外报告中收集信息。自明治时期以来，日本人学习英语的初衷和主要目的就是学习海外技术。

Another reason is to enable them to communicate with foreigners about themselves or Japan. Yet another reason is for entrance exams, and for English proficiency and TOEIC exams and qualifications.

另一个原因是英语能让他们与外国人谈论他们自己或日本。此外学好英语可以应对入学考试、英语水平测试、托业考试和资格考试。

英文来源：The Japan News

中文来源：爱语吧（部分内容有更正）

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