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Beyond Babel (11)
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People say that we are going to have perfected machine translation in 15 years and they've been saying that since 1960 and in the year 2050 I think they're going to be saying, "Just 15 years from now we will have got it down". It's an enormously difficult problem to translate, not just poetry, which resists translation but the simplest texts. If you want to say, "Remove the spark plug" in German you use one verb. If you are saying, "Remove the fan belt" you use another verb. If you're saying, "Remove the carburettor" you use another verb and that's very difficult for a machine to master.
There are however, less sophisticated systems currently available on the Internet and at British Telecom's research center, Adastral Park, another step is being taken towards the ultimate goal.
We're developing a machine translation system called Pen Pal and its different to most other translation systems in that it tries to get at the meaning behind text and not just process it in a very superficial way. When you type in a sentence it analyses the sentence to check for ambiguities. If I click on the word 'I' here it asks whether I'm male or female because that could be important to translation. The word 'see' could have several meanings, in this case we mean to see by sight, but it could say be a doctor seeing a patient, in which case it might be a different translation in different languages. It wants to know if the 'cat' is male or female as that might have an effect too on the translation. It's now got an unambiguous representation of this phrase. And there's the translation into French. It's currently an experimental system and we haven't reached the prototype stage yet really, but we would like to productize it if possible or incorporate it into other systems where it could be useful to anybody trying to communicate with somebody that doesn't speak the same language as them.
The technology can do amazing things and it's already being used by lots of people who can make do with something less than a perfect translation. If I go onto the Internet and I want to find out if the hotel in Milan takes visa cards, if I receive a letter from somebody in Greece that I don't know how to translate I can at least get an idea of what the letter's about and I think those uses of the technology will continue to spread. The technology will improve.
In the meantime even the English speaking world is coming to accept the fact that in order to communicate effectively the future has to be multilingual.
The world is moving towards an increasingly multi-lingual future. The most obvious benefit is that it enables you to see the world from a number of different points of view, and it makes you a more open minded individual, there's no shadow of a doubt about that. As one assimilates the culture you become part of it and you suddenly see that your own way is just one way of many ways of seeing the world, it's an immensely strong force for tolerance.
In Asia the move towards becoming bilingual in English has been enthusiastically embraced. There are now more people learning English as a foreign language in China than there are native speakers in America.
And in Japan where English has traditionally been regarded as a threat to Japanese culture, there is a growing focus on the importance of acquiring the language.
Asia is becoming English speaking Asia, very much rapid, and yet if Japan would just seclude itself and just want to maintain its purity, quote unquote, then how can Japan communicate with the neighboring countries and societies. English is not just Anglo Saxon English these days, English has become to be second language for many societies.
Japan currently has one of the lowest levels of English literacy in Asia and has begun to recognize the potential cost to its economy if bi-lingualism isn't encouraged. In Tokyo, the Foreign Press Association recently hosted a conference to discuss the economic importance of English as a common language in the region.
There's a kind of panic in Japan over English and a real sense of crisis that didn't exist before. English always played a big role in Japan. But Japan has a kind of a translation culture, where it takes what it wants from the West and translates it into Japanese. Or it takes everything it thinks it needs and translates it into Japanese.
There was a Japanese professor at Kao who said "We shouldn't have to apologize for using Japanese English. The notion that English belongs to the Americans or Britons is narrow minded. English is now the language of the world. And so people are saying you know, it belongs to us and we will change it and use it."
You don't want everybody to speak with a British accent or American accent. It's good to have Thai accent, Indonesian accent, Japanese accent. But when they get together they speak in the English that is intelligible, because you need to have identity of the speaker. You don't want to have Asian face and then everybody speaks Oxbridge accent.
The numbers of non-native speakers has really boomed and have taken the language for themselves. And they say, you know, "This is our language and we're going to change it and use it." So that has definitely taken place. And I think that American English or British English, you know, it was the starting point, it's no longer the standard.
I think we're moving towards a bi-lingual, multi-cultural world. United States itself, which has been quite insular in terms of language, is promoting more multi-lingual, also multi-cultural values. And so there's a convergence.
We thought we had this huge advantage being native speakers of English and now with so many people bi-lingual around the world. And with English having changed that unless Americans are also bi-lingual, we're not going to be able to communicate.
In this day and age you have to accept the fact that we need a language through which you should be able to communicate with an increasing number of people, and if your language is not the one and unluckily Japanese isn't the language, then the only way you can expand your horizon is to, is to learn another language, and I'm probably a bit sorry it has to be English because, as I said, it is not an easy language to learn, but if it were Swedish or French or German, you know those languages might have their own peculiarities that would make it difficult to learn.
English language education has in fact been a regular feature in the Japanese curriculum since the end of the Second World War. However teaching methods have relied on grammatical instruction with little attention paid to the spoken language.
The problem is they're still using the grammar translation system. It has never changed in all these years. You come in to...after graduation they have six years of English in the High School system, but they still can't speak English. They understand, but they can't say it.
Tom Trinkel is one of a growing number of language teachers working in the private sector in Japan trying to raise the standards of spoken English.
Practise with a partner...
You come here you're doing five, six hours a day, everyday and we're going what, six months, and their English was fine. They can carry a conversation with you.
I'd like to give her something different this time...
Have you considered buying jewellery for her birthday?
That's my idea...
For me my life is this school and my students. And my family's very much a part of what I do. They are excited to talk to my children because my children and bi-lingual, bi-cultural. They are what the students want to be.
What do you usually give your mother for her birthday?
Sometimes a box of chocolates and sometimes flowers.
I went to university in 1970/71. I had an old Japanese teacher who told me Japanese is a dying language. And this was an old Japanese woman and she said, "Today there is no more new kanji. All the new words coming into the language are foreign words so what I see is more and more the influence of foreign culture coming into Japan."
So what's the difference? Can I help you? May I help you?
We use made... we use may... more polite, I think.
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英语的故事（十一）
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有人说15年后我们将造出完美的翻译机，他们从60年代开始就这么说。我想等到2050年，他们又会说，15年内，我们一定会解决它。翻译是件非常困难的事，不仅诗歌是这样，就连最简单的字也是如此。你用德语说"卸下火花塞"时，用一个动词，而说"卸下风扇传动带"时，就要用另个动词，再说"卸下汽化器"时，动词又变了，这对翻译机来说是很难掌握的。
然而目前在互联网上，有不太复杂的系统，在英国电讯公司的研究中心 Adastral Park
人们向最终目标又前进了一步。
我们在开发，一种叫"笔友"的翻译机系统与其它翻译系统的不同之处在于它想办法弄清文字背后的意思，而不只是处理文字的表面意思。你输入一句话，系统就开始分析查看是否一词多义。如果我点击"I"字，系统会问"我"是男是女，因为这在翻译中很重要。"see"这个字有好几种意思，在这里，我们的意思是用眼睛看，它也可能是大夫给病人看病的看。不同的语言，翻译的方法也不同。系统想知道"猫"是公的还是母的，因为这也会使翻译受到影响，现在这个短句就有了明确的意义，这是翻译成的法语，目前它还是个试验性系统，还没有达到标准阶段，但是如有可能我们想生产或将它集合到其它系统中，使其有助于人们与讲不同语言的人沟通。这种技术功能很强，许多不太在乎翻译是否完美的人，已经使用过它，如果我想上网查询米兰的旅店收不收VISA卡，如果我接到一封来自希腊的信而我又不懂怎么翻译，至少我能大致了解信的内容。我想上述技术的应用将继续普及，技术本身会不断完善，与此同时，讲英语的世界也在接受这个现实。要想有效地交流，未来必定是个多种语言的世界才行。
世界正朝着多种语言的方向发展，最大的好处是能使你以不同的观点看世界，使你的思想更开放，这是毫无疑问的。当一个人融入一种文化成为其中一员时，会突然领悟到你看世界的方式只是若干方式中的一种，这是一种强大的包容力。目前亚洲各国都热情地将英语作为第二语言，在中国，把英语当作外语来学的人比美国以英语为母语的人还多。在日本，传统上把英语视为对日本文化的威胁，如今学英语越来越受到重视，亚洲正迅速变成说英语的亚洲，如果日本把自己孤立起来，保持所谓的纯洁性，那日本怎么和周边社会交流呢？如今英语已不再属盎格鲁萨克逊人专有，对许多国家来说，英语已经成为第二语言。
日本是亚洲英语普及率最低的国家之一，日本已经开始意识到，不加紧鼓励学习英语将对经济造成损害。
在东京，外国记者协会最近举办了一个会议，专门讨论“英语作为通用语对地区经济的重要性”。日本现在对英语有一种恐慌，这种危机感以前并不存在，英语在日本一直有重要的作用，但日本有一种翻译文化，日本从西方拿一些想要的东西，然后把它们翻译成日语，或者说，它将一切需要的东西翻译成日语。"花王"公司的一位日本教授说："我们不用为说日本式英语而道歉，认为英语属于美国人或英国人的观念太狭隘了，现在英语属于这个世界，因此人们会说， 英语属于我们，我们将改变它，并使用它。"你不要指望每个人都用英国口音或美国口音讲话，有泰国口音、印度尼西亚口音、日本口音也很好，当他们聚在一起讲英语时，很容易理解彼此讲英语的情形，因为你需要了解讲话者的身份，不要指望亚洲人人人都讲一口英国上层社会英语。非英语母语的人数剧增，他们自己掌握了这种语言，他们说："这是我们的语言，我们要改变它并使用它。"这种情况确实发生了，我认为美国英语或英国英语只是个出发点，不再是标准了。
我们正在朝着一个双语，多文化的世界发展，一向在语言方面有偏见的美国，也正在提倡多语言和多元文化的价值观，因此存在着相互融合的现象。我们英语为母语的人，本来就很有优势，现在世界各地又有这么多，双语人口 优势则更加显著，英语发生了变化，除非美国人也成为双语，否则我们将无法沟通。
在这个年代，你不得不接受这个事实，我们需要一种语言，它能使你与越来越多的人沟通，如果你的母语不是这种语言，很不幸 日语就不是你唯一扩展视野的办法，就是学习另一种语言，遗憾的是这种语言是英语，因为英语不容易学，但如果通用语是瑞典语、法语或德语，那些语言有其自己的独特性，也是很难学的。
事实上，二战之后英语教学一直是日本课程的特色，然而 教学方式一直着重语法教学而忽视口语。
问题是他们还在使用语法翻译系统，这些年一直没有改变，他们在中学学了6年英语毕业后，但他们还是不能说英语，他们能明白就是说不出来。
越来越多像汤姆·特林科尔这样的，语言教师在日本私营企业工作，帮助提高英语口语水平和同伴进行练习。
你每天来这儿学5-6个小时，我们这样进行6个月，他们的英语就挺好的了，他们能和你交谈，这次我想送她点什么别的东西，你想过生日时给她买首饰吗？这正是我的主意，对我来说，学校和学生就是我的一切，我全家都参与进来，他们和我的孩子聊天很兴奋，因为我的孩子们都是双语、双文化的，学生们也想成为这样的人。你通常给你妈妈买什么生日礼物？有时买巧克力，有时买花。我1970/71年上了大学，我的一个日本老教师跟我说，日语是正在消亡的语言。这是一位老妇人， 她说：“今天再也没有新的日本汉字了，语言中的新词汇都是外国的，我看到的是越来越多的外国文化进入日本，这有什么不同呢？”
Can I help you? May I help you?
我们用“may” 更礼貌些。
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