2023年06月四级第1套长篇阅读匹配原文翻译及答案

A) We're growing more used to chatting to our computers, phones and smart speakers through voice assistants like Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana. Blind and partially sighted people have been using text-to-speech converters for decades.

我们越来越习惯通过像亚马逊的Alexa、苹果的Siri和微软的Cortana这样的语音助手与电脑、手机和智能音箱聊天。失明和视力受损的人几十年来一直在使用文本转语音转换器。

B) Out of these assistants, Siri is the most well-known. The assistant uses voice inquiries and a natural-language user interface (界面) to answer questions. The software adapts to users' individual language usages, searches, and preferences, with continuing use.

在这些助手中，Siri是最知名的。该助手使用语音查询和自然语言用户界面来回答问题。随着持续使用，该软件会适应用户的个人语言使用、搜索和偏好。

C) Some think voice could soon take over from typing and clicking as the main way to interact online. But what are the challenges of moving to "the spoken web"?

一些人认为，语音可能很快就会取代打字和点击，成为在线互动的主要方式。但转向“语音网络”有哪些挑战呢？

D) What use is written online content if you can't read? That is the situation facing illiterate (不识字的) African farmers. They are often denied crucial information the web offers many others. With a literacy rate in some parts of Africa at only 22.6%, farmers are often "underpaid for their produce because they might be unaware of the prevailing prices," says Francis Dittoh, a researcher behind Mr. Meteo, a speech-based weather information service.

如果你不会阅读，在线书面内容有什么用呢？这就是不识字的非洲农民面临的处境。他们常常被剥夺网络提供给其他人的关键信息。在一些非洲地区，识字率仅为22.6%，农民常常“因为可能不了解市场价格而导致产品被低估，”为基于语音的天气信息服务Mr. Meteo工作的研究员Francis Dittoh说。

E) "The most frequently heard complaint is about rainfall predictions," says Mr. Dittoh, who lives in Tamale, northern Ghana. "They tell us the methods their forefathers used to predict the weather don't seem to work as well these days." This is down to climate change, he believes. Yet knowing when it's going to rain is vital for farmers wanting to sow seeds, irrigate crops or take their animals out to the fields to feed on grass.

“最常听到的抱怨是关于降雨预测的，”住在加纳北部塔马利的Dittoh先生说。“他们告诉我们，他们祖辈用来预测天气的方法似乎现在不那么管用了。”他认为这归因于气候变化。然而，对于想要播种、灌溉作物或带动物去田野吃草的农民来说，知道何时下雨至关重要。

F) Mr. Dittoh says the idea of converting online weather reports into speech came from the farmers themselves, after a workshop in the village of Guabuligah. "They came up with this," he says. Mr. Meteo takes the online weather forecast, converts it to a short recording in the appropriate language and makes it available on a basic phone. Farmers ring up to receive the information. The local language Dagbani is spoken by 1.2 million people but is not served by any online translation applications. The service was designed to be cheap and easy to run, says Mr. Dittoh. He plans to begin field tests this month, working with Tamale's Savanna Agricultural Research Institute.

Dittoh先生说，将在线天气报告转换为语音的想法来自农民自己，这是在Guabuligah村的一次研讨会之后。“他们提出了这个想法，”他说。Mr. Meteo获取在线天气预报，将其转换为适当语言的简短录音，并在基础手机上提供。农民打电话来接收信息。当地语言Dagbani有120万人使用，但没有任何在线翻译应用支持。Dittoh先生说，该服务设计得廉价且易于运行。他计划本月开始实地测试，与塔马利的萨凡纳农业研究所合作。

G) The spoken web could also help the one-in-five adults in Europe and the U.S. with poor reading skills. But building the spoken web—web-to-voice and voice-to-web—isn't straightforward. For software to understand pizza is served at Italian restaurants is easy. To cover multiple domains and to be able to have a conversation with users on every single topic is still a long way off.

语音网络也可能帮助欧洲和美国五分之一阅读能力差的成年人。但构建语音网络——从网页到语音和从语音到网页——并不简单。对于软件来说，理解披萨在意大利餐厅供应很容易。要涵盖多个领域并与用户就每个话题进行对话，还有很长的路要走。

H) So although many computer assistants can answer simple questions about the weather and play music for us, anything resembling a wide-ranging human conversation is decades away. Artificial intelligence just isn't smart enough yet. Even turning your voice into text—automatic speech recognition—is one of the hardest problems to solve, as there are as many ways to pronounce things as there are people on the planet.

因此，尽管许多计算机助手可以回答关于天气的简单问题并为我们播放音乐，但任何类似于广泛人类对话的东西都还需要几十年时间。人工智能还不够智能。即使将语音转换为文本——自动语音识别——也是最难解决的问题之一，因为世界上有多少人就有多少种发音方式。

I) Siri has often been praised for its ability to interpret our casual language and deliver very specific and accurate results, sometimes even providing additional information. But it is still somewhat restricted, particularly when the language moves away from stiffer commands into more human interactions. In one example, the phrase "Send a text to Jason, Clint, Sam, and Lee saying we're having dinner at Silver Cloud restaurant" was interpreted as sending a message to Jason only, containing the text "Clint Sam and Lee saying we're having dinner at Silver Cloud restaurant". It has also been noted that Siri lacks a proper editing function, as saying "Edit message to say: we're at Silver Cloud restaurant and you should come find us" generates "Clint Sam and Lee saying we're having dinner at Silver Cloud restaurant to say we're at Silver Cloud restaurant and you should come find us".

Siri经常因其能够解释我们的随意语言并提供非常具体和准确的结果而受到赞扬，有时甚至提供额外信息。但它仍然有些受限，特别是当语言从僵硬的命令转向更人性化互动时。在一个例子中，短语“给Jason、Clint、Sam和Lee发短信说我们在银云餐厅吃饭”被解释为仅向Jason发送一条消息，内容为“Clint Sam and Lee saying we're having dinner at Silver Cloud restaurant”。还注意到Siri缺乏适当的编辑功能，比如说“编辑消息说：我们在银云餐厅，你应该来找我们”会生成“Clint Sam and Lee saying we're having dinner at Silver Cloud restaurant to say we're at Silver Cloud restaurant and you should come find us”。

J) Using voice interaction feels far more intimate than surfing the net the old-fashioned way. This is intentional as the informal tone of the assistant helps create an emotional attachment. But if something speaks, it must also listen. Our phones are always near us and they are collecting data about us all the time. This has already raised privacy concerns. The American Civil Liberties Union has stated that digital assistants create a threat to privacy from hackers. Some people have other concerns. They worry assistants will one day be used to deliver advertising directly to us.

使用语音互动感觉比老式上网方式更加亲密。这是有意为之，因为助手的非正式语气有助于建立情感依恋。但如果某物会说话，它也必须倾听。我们的手机始终在身边，它们一直在收集我们的数据。这已经引起了隐私担忧。美国公民自由联盟表示，数字助手对隐私构成黑客威胁。有些人有其他担忧。他们担心助手有一天会被用来直接向我们投放广告。

K) But digital voices need more personality to make them popular. Robots are not yet witty, Siri is boring. The benefits of using voice instead of tapping fingers obviously depend on the context. Doctors completing online forms about their patients by speech, for example, can dictate 150 words a minute, three times faster than typing on a keyboard. This enables them to spend less time on administration and more time with patients.

但数字声音需要更多个性来使其受欢迎。机器人还不够机智，Siri很无聊。使用语音代替敲击手指的好处显然取决于上下文。例如，医生通过语音完成关于患者的在线表格，可以每分钟口述150个单词，比键盘打字快三倍。这使他们能够在行政工作上花费更少时间，而在患者身上花费更多时间。

L) Last year, speech recognition company Nuance helped a doctors' surgery in Dukinfield, near Manchester, set up a speech system for the practice's six doctors. Now they can dictate notes on a patient's health condition and treatment and a smart assistant automatically enters the information into the right fields on a web form. Previously, the doctors made voice recordings that were then transcribed by secretaries -- a process that was costly and likely to cause delays. The new system means letters to patients now have more detail.

去年，语音识别公司Nuance帮助曼彻斯特附近的Dukinfield一家医生诊所为其六位医生建立了语音系统。现在，他们可以口述关于患者健康状况和治疗的笔记，智能助手会自动将信息输入到网络表单的相应字段中。以前，医生录制语音，然后由秘书转录——这个过程成本高且可能导致延误。新系统意味着给患者的信件现在有更多细节。

M) Using voice also makes sense when you're doing other things with your hands. Think about when you're cooking, and you just want to know what the next step in the recipe is. Your hands are covered with oil; you're not going to get on the iPad, so it's a lot more natural to talk. And speech obviously makes sense when you're driving. In the U.S., 29% of drivers admit they surf behind the wheel, according to insurance firm State Farm. This is up from 13% in 2009. No wonder using mobile phones while driving causes more crashes a year than drunk driving, says the U.S. National Safety Council.

当你用双手做其他事情时，使用语音也很有意义。想想当你在烹饪时，你只想知道食谱的下一步是什么。你的手上沾满了油；你不会去拿iPad，所以说话自然多了。当你开车时，语音显然也有意义。在美国，根据保险公司State Farm的数据，29%的司机承认他们在开车时上网。这比2009年的13%有所上升。难怪美国国家安全委员会表示，开车时使用手机每年导致的事故比酒驾还多。