师爷译丛：《经济学人》：语音控制改变计算机世界

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文章来源：《经济学人》Economist

2017年1月7日刊

翻译：师旸 MITI

总字数：约1,000英文单词

翻译时间：约45分钟

How voice technology is transforming computing

语音控制如何改变计算机世界

Any sufficiently advanced technology, noted Arthur C. Clarke, a Britishscience-fiction writer, is indistinguishable from magic. The fast-emerging technology of voice computing proves his point. Using it is just like casting aspell: say a few words into the air, and a nearby device can grant your wish.

英国科幻作家亚瑟·克拉克（Arthur C. Clarke）发现，任何足够先进的科技都和魔法看上去差不多。声控计算技术的飞速发展证明了他的观点。使用这种技术就好像使用咒语：朝空气中说几个词，附近的某个装置就会实现你的愿望。

The Amazon Echo, a voice-driven cylindrical computer that sits on a table top and answers to the name Alexa, can call up music tracks and radio stations, telljokes, answer trivia questions and control smart appliances; even beforeChristmas it was already resident in about 4% of American households. Voice assistants are proliferating in smartphones, too: Apple’s Siri handles over 2bncommands a week, and 20% of Google searches on Android-powered handsets in America are input by voice. Dictating e-mails and text messages now works reliably enough to be useful. Why type when you can talk?

亚马逊的Echo是一个用语音驱动的圆柱形计算机，它被放置在桌子上面，如果有人叫它“Alexa”，它就可以做出回应。它可以根据指令放音乐及广播、讲笑话、回答一些简单问题并控制智能设备。甚至在2016年圣诞节之前，它就已经进入了4%的美国家庭中。在智能手机中语音助理的使用也在蓬勃发展：苹果公司的Siri每周处理超过20亿个声音指令，同时在美国Android系统中发生的Google搜索有20%依赖语音输入。口述电子邮件和短信现在已经可靠到足以应用的程度了。当你可以说话的时候，你为什么还要打字呢?

This is a huge shift. Simple though it may seem, voice has the power to transform computing, by providing a natural means of interaction. Windows, icons and menus, and then touchscreens, were welcomed as more intuitive ways to deal with computers than entering complex keyboard commands. But being able to talk to computers abolishes the need for the abstraction of a “user interface” at all.Just as mobile phones were more than existing phones without wires, and cars were more than carriages without horses, so computers without screens an keyboards have the potential to be more useful, powerful and ubiquitous than people can imagine today.

这是一个巨大的变化。虽然看起来很简单，但语音技术有能力改变计算机产业——通过提供一种自然的交流方式。曾几何时，窗口、图标、菜单以及触屏得到人们的欢迎，人们把它们视为比用键盘输入复杂指令更加直观的人机交流方式。但是如果我们可以直接与计算机讲话，这将完全取消了“用户界面”存在的必要性。正如移动电话并不仅仅是原有的电话去掉了线缆、汽车并不仅仅是车厢去掉了拉车的马，去掉了屏幕与键盘的计算机也有潜力成为更有效用、更强大、更加普遍，其潜力远超目前人们的想象。

Voice will not wholly replace other forms of input and output. Sometimes it will remain more convenient to converse with a machine by typing rather than talking (Amazon is said to be working on an Echo device with a built-in screen). But voice is destined to account for a growing share of people’s interactions with the technology around them, from washing machines that tell you how much of the cycle they have left to virtual assistants in corporate call centres. However, to reach its full potential, the technology requires further breakthroughs—and a resolution of the tricky questions it raises around the trade-off between convenience and privacy.

语音控制并不会完全取代其他的输入输出方式。有时通过键入的方式进行人际交流还是比讲话更为方便（亚马逊据说正在研制一种有内置屏幕的Echo设备）。但语音控制无疑将在人们与身边设备的沟通过程中占到更大的比例，无论是能够告诉你还剩下几个洗衣环节的洗衣机，还是公司客服中心的虚拟客户助理。然而，为了全面实现其潜力，语音控制技术还需要进一步的突破——同时还需要解决方便与隐私之间存在的棘手问题。

Computer-dictation systems have been around for years. But they were unreliable and required lengthy training to learn a specific user’s voice. Computers’ new ability to recognise almost anyone’s speech dependably without training is the latest manifestation of the power of “deep learning”, an artificial-intelligence technique in which a software system is trained using millions of examples, usually culled from the internet. Thanks to deep learning, machines now nearly equal humans in transcription accuracy, computerised translation systems are improving rapidly and text-to-speech systems are becoming less robotic and more natural-sounding.Computers are, in short, getting much better at handling natural language in all its forms.

计算机语音输入系统已经存在多年，但是这些系统可靠性不高，同时还需要长时间训练以识别某一特定用户的语音。无需训练即可以较高的可靠性识别任何人的语音控制，是“深层次学习”技术的巨大能力的最新展现。“深层次学习”技术是一种人工智能技术，这种技术让软件系统通过几百万实例（通常通过互联网采集）进行训练。正是由于这种技术，机器现在实现了几乎与人相当的听写能力，计算机化的翻译系统正得到迅速改进，同时文字转化为语音的程序也听起来更加像人类而不是机器。简单来说，计算机在处理各种形式的自然语言方面取得了巨大进步。

Although deep learning means that machines can recognise speech more reliably and talkin a less stilted manner, they still don’t understand the meaning of language.That is the most difficult aspect of the problem and, if voice-driven computing is truly to flourish, one that must be overcome. Computers must be able to understand context in order to maintain a coherent conversation about something, rather than just responding to simple, one-off voice commands, as they mostly do today (“Hey, Siri, set a timer for ten minutes”). Researchers in universities and at companies large and small are working on this very problem, building “bots” that can hold more elaborate conversations about more complex tasks, from retrieving information to advising on mortgages to making travel arrangements. (Amazon is offering a $1m prize for a bot that can converse “coherently and engagingly” for 20 minutes.)

虽然“深层次学习”技术使机器能够更准确地识别对话并做出不那么机械化的回复，但是机器仍然不能理解语言的含义——这是整个问题最为复杂的方面，同时也是语音控制的真正取得成功所必需克服的方面。为了维持对于某事物的具有连贯性的对话，计算机必须能够理解上下文，而不仅仅是对于简单的、一次性的指令做出回应——这是今日它们通常所做的（“嗨，Siri，上一个10分钟的闹铃。”）。在各种规模的大学及企业中的研究人员正在试图解决这一问题，创造能够针对更复杂的任务而进行更复杂对话的“机器人”，比如为房屋抵押贷款的决策提取相应信息，或者安排旅行计划等（亚马逊悬赏100万美元给任何能够“连贯并积极地”进行20分钟对话的设备）。

Consumers and regulators also have a role to play in determining how voice computing develops. Even in its current, relatively primitive form, the technology poses a dilemma: voice-driven systems are most useful when they are personalised, and are granted wide access to sources of data such as calendars, e-mails and other sensitive information. That raises privacy and security concerns.

消费者和市场监管者还需要决定语音识别技术应当如何发展。即使在其当前的原始形态下，这一技术也呈现出一个难题：语音驱动的系统想要发挥最大的作用，必须是经过个性化定制的，同时还必须能够进入众多数据，如日历、电子邮件和其它敏感信息。这引起了有关个人隐私及安全性的担忧。

To further complicate matters, many voice-driven devices are always listening, waiting to be activated. Some people are already concerned about the implications of internet-connected microphones listening in every room and from every smartphone. Not all audio is sent to the cloud—devices wait for a trigger phrase (“Alexa”, “OK, Google”, “Hey, Cortana”, or “Hey, Siri”) before they start relaying the user’s voice to the servers that actually handle the requests—but when it comes to storing audio, it is unclear who keeps what and when.

让问题变得更加复杂的是，很多语音驱动系统总是处于倾听的状态下，等待被用户激活。目前已经有些人对于联网的麦克风连续不断地从每个房间、每个智能手机倾听声音表达了不安。并不是所有音频文件都会被上传到云端——这些设备等待着“激发性词语”（“Alexa”、“OK，Google”，“Hey，Cortana”或者“Hey，Siri”），之后才将用户的语音传输到服务器当中进行处理，但是在音频文件的储存问题上，很难说谁能够在什么时间、保留什么内容。

Police investigating a murder in Arkansas, which may have been overheard by an Amazon Echo, have asked the company for access to any audio that might have been captured. Amazon has refused to co-operate, arguing (with the backing of privacy advocates) that the legal status of such requests is unclear. The situation is analogous to Apple’s refusal in 2016 to help FBI investigators unlock a terrorist’s iPhone; both cases highlight the need for rules that specify when and what intrusions into personal privacy are justified in the interests of security.

警察正在对阿肯色州的一桩谋杀案展开调查，而这起谋杀有可能被亚马逊的一个Echo设备收听并记录了。警方要求亚马逊公司允许其提取可能记录下来的音频文件。亚马逊拒绝合作。在隐私权捍卫者的支持下，公司争辩说此种要求的法律地位尚不明确。这一情形与2016年苹果公司拒绝帮助FBI解锁iPhone几乎如出一辙。两起事件都展现出我们需要相关法规来明确，出于公众安全的角度，在什么时机以及在何种程度上个人隐私可以受到侵犯。

Consumers will adopt voice computing even if such issues remain unresolved. In many situations voice is far more convenient and natural than any other means of communication. Uniquely, it can also be used while doing something else (driving, working out or walking down the street). It can extend the power of computing to people unable, for one reason or another, to use screens and keyboards. And it could have a dramatic impact not just on computing, but on the use of language itself. Computerised simultaneous translation could render the need to speak a foreign language irrelevant for many people; and in a world where machines can talk, minor languages may be more likely to survive. The arrival of the touchscreen was the last big shift in the way humans interact with computers. The leap to speech matters more.

即使上面提到的问题仍未得到解决，消费者还是会采用语音控制技术。在很多情况下，语音控制比其它沟通手段方便、自然得多。特别是用户能够在做其他事情的时候使用它（开车、工作或者走路）。它可以把计算机的力量扩展到那些出于某种原因不能够使用屏幕或键盘的人们身上。同时，这一技术的巨大影响不仅会作用在计算能力上，还会作用在语言本身。计算机化的实时翻译使得人们不再需要学会讲一门外语；同时，在一个机器能够讲话的世界上，小语种有更大的生存机会。触屏的出现是人际交流最新的巨大改变，而朝向语音控制的飞跃更为重要。

师爷简介

北京爷们儿，留英七年海龟，英语培训师及翻译师，北师大实验中学校友会常务理事。英国威尔士大学会计与金融专业本科，曾任CCTV-5和《体坛周报》驻英特约记者。

英国翻译及口译协会（Institute of Translation and Interpreting, ITI）认证的翻译师（MITI），认证考试阅卷人，所译文字无需公证即得到绝大多数政府及社会机构认可接受。

从事英语培训6年，专注一对一留学培训，培育高分学员数不胜数。能够在最短时间内永久性解决学生的英语问题。