BBC 6分钟英语学习 翻译技术

From

BBC Learning English. Hello. This is six minute English from BBC Learning English.

I'm Rob, and I'm Sam. Rob.

I'm writing a letter to a friend in Spain, and I need some help.

Do you know the Spanish for it's raining.

Don't worry. I have this new app.

I just hold up my phone, scan

the word I want translated. Esther Yoviendo is the Spanish for its raining.

Amazing. In this program, we're discussing language technologies, computers that can translate between languages.

Modern software like Google Translate has transformed how we learn foreign languages, bringing us closer to a world where language is no longer a barrier to communication.

But how well do these computers know what we really mean to say?

Well, later, well, find out exactly what machines can and can't translate, and as usual, will be learning some new vocabulary as well.

But 1st, I have a question for you, sam.

The translation app I use just now is very recent, but there's a long history of computer mis translations, times when computers got it badly wrong.

In 1987, the American Airline Branif ran television adverts promoting the all leather seats installed on their flight to Mexico.

But how was its Fly in Lever advertising slogan mistranslated into Spanish.

Did the advert say A Fly in lava, B Fly on a cow, or C Fly naked?

I have a feeling it might be C Fly naked.

OK, sam, I'll reveal the correct answer later in the program.

Computer software used to rely on rules based translation, applying the grammar rules of one language to another.

That works fine for simple words and phrases.

But what happens when a translator comes across more complex language, e.g.

metaphors, expressions used to describe one thing by comparing it to another?

Lane Green is a language journalist and the author of the book Talk on the wild Side.

Here, he explains to BBC Radio four program Word of Mouth, how apps like Google Translate allow users to manually translate metaphors.

If I say it's raining cats and dogs, and it literally translates Estasio, you know better, rosie, got those in Spanish, that won't make any sense, but I think somebody at Google will have inputted the phrase yo, yo abe a gunthedos, which is the phrase it's raining pictures where it's raining jugs of water, so that the whole chunk raining cats and dogs is translated into the equivalent metaphor in Spanish.

Lane wants to translate the phrase, it's raining cats and dogs, something that people sometimes say when it's raining heavily.

It wouldn't make sense to translate this phrase into another language, literally word by word.

One solution is to translate the whole idiom as a chunk or a large, passive text or language.

This works for phrases and idioms that people regularly use in the same way, because they can be taught to a computer.

But what happens when someone, like a poet writes a completely new sentence which has never been written before?

Lang Green thinks that even the smartest software couldn't deal with that.

As he told Michael Rosen, poet and presenter of BBC radio, falls word of mouth.

But if poet writes a new one, then the machine is not going to pick it up, and it's going to have a struggle, isn't it?

Sorry, I'm, yeah, I'm sticking up for poetry here and trying to claim that it's untranslatable.

Can you hear what I'm doing?

I hear you. And, you know, in a war against the machines, our advantages novelty and creative.

So you're right that machines will be great at anything that has wrote, anything that's already been done a million times can be automated.

So you and I, with our with our preferental cortexes, can can try to come up with phrases that'll flemics the computer and so keep our jobs.

When we say machines learn a language, we really mean they have been trained to identify patterns in millions and millions of translations.

Computers can only learn by wrote by memory in order to repeat information rather than to properly understand it.

This kind of root learning can be easily automated, done by machines instead of humans, but it's completely different from human learning, requiring creative thinking, which would flumics or confuse even the most sophisticated machine.

Bad news for translation software, but good news for humans who use different languages in their jobs, like us.

Yes, if only Brandif airlines had relied on human translators, they might have avoided an embarrassing situation.

Ah. In your question, you asked how Brandish television advertisement Fly in Lever was translated into Spanish.

I guessed it was misranlated as Fly Naked, which was the correct answer.

Browniff translated its Fly in leather slogan as Fly

in Quero, which sounds like Spanish slang for Fly naked.

OK, let's recap the vocabulary from this program about language translations, which are automated, done by machines instead of humans.

Erence to something else. When it's raining heavily, you might use the idiom it's raining cats and dogs.

A chunk is a large part of something wrote.

Learning involves memorizing information which you repeat but don't really understand.

And finally, if someone is flemoxed, they're so confused that they don't know what to do.

Once again, our 6 min are up.

Join us again soon for more trending topics and useful vocabulary here at 6 min English.

But goodbye for now, by.

扫码查看听力音频