【纽约时报 20130213】谷歌翻译软件的实地应用
【中文标题】谷歌翻译软件的实地应用
【原文标题】Lost in Translation? Try a Google App
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文作者】SETH KUGEL
【原文链接】http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/lost-in-translation-try-a-google-app/?ref=china
谷歌翻译软件。
奉节是长江流域一个不经常有外国人到访的小城镇，一个年轻人在繁忙的码头走过来告诉我，到重庆的江轮明天早上4点出发。他的英语水平极为有限，我始终无法搞明白怎样买一张船票（我可不想在凌晨3点过来这里买票）。
于是我从兜里掏出iPhone，打开谷歌翻译软件，输入“Where can I buy a boat ticket?”，一串中文字出现了，他看了之后点点头。我把录入界面转换成英文，把手机递给他。他按动罗马字母，中文字符神奇般地一个个出现了。之后出现了一句完整的英文“You want to buy a ticket on board.”
每天花50美元延长江逆流而上是一项具有挑战性的任务。在中国20美元一晚的宾馆里、2美元一份菜品的餐馆里，能说英语的人少而又少。标牌和菜单上的字我一个也不认得。而且中文是一种声调语言——变音决定意思，所以按照常用语手册中的发音往往是徒劳的。
我多年来一直在关注谷歌翻译工具的进化，但是这趟旅程是一次真正的考验，在普通美国人立即变成聋哑文盲的地方，它真的能逆转这样的不利局面吗？
答案是肯定的，当然，事先做好一些准备就更好了（联合国的翻译们不用担心下岗，至少现在还不用担心）。下面是我的一些建议、经验和教训：
准备好你的手机
翻译软件在家里使用很简单，但是在嘈杂的街道上或者后面排着长长队伍的车站里，就没那么简单了。这种情况下，沟通速度越快越好，所以要事先做好准备。如果对方需要不同的输入法，你需要给他们事先准备好，并且能够熟练转换输入法。一旦翻译的内容出现，你应该把手机水平放置，让屏幕横过来，这样字体会大一些，尤其是当你的沟通对象和你面对面时——比如坐在玻璃窗后面的售票人员。（如果你有机会和会讲其它语言的朋友练习一下这样的沟通方式，那就更好了。）
言简意赅
自动翻译必然会出错误，因此要去掉那些有可能引起歧义的词，即使如此，翻译的结果也会比较生硬。“我能过一会来取我的包吗”，这句话有些含糊，还不如说“我能把包在这里寄存到下午5点吗”。在巴东时，我的后背很疼，我想找一个地方按摩，但是担心别人误会我是否需要其它的服务。为了准确表达，我输入“我的后背有点疼”，得到的报价是128元人民币（大约21美元）。“有便宜点的服务吗？”对方把价格降到48元人民币。“服务内容是什么？”回答是“推拿”。没什么问题了，我说好的。
准备好指引
大部分年轻人拿着手机都知道该做什么，但是岁数稍微大一些的人就没那么快的反应了。他们一般都试图在屏幕上手写（这是很多中国智能手机都具备的功能）。于是我事先准备好一句话“请用拼音输入，我的手机会自动翻译成英文”，这样速度会快很多。你也可以用这种方式准备好其它常用短语，比如“我想要一个有坐便器的房间”。
不要讲话
谷歌翻译有语音识别功能，你可以对着手机讲话，它甚至还可以把翻译结果讲出来。这在理论上是可行的，但实际操作却是一塌糊涂。翻译的速度很慢，发音像机器人。当然，这套软件的中文发音还是不错，但他真能听懂出租车司机的方言吗？（我向你保证，至少在武汉行不通。）据说安卓版本的软件可以识别中文字符，但我没有测试过。
别吝啬赞扬
尽管这个软件主要会在紧急时发挥作用，但我还发现它是一个绝佳的赞扬工具——当“谢谢”不足以表达我的感激之情时。有一次我怀着尝试的心理买了一串烤青蛙，结果非常好吃。于是我回到那个摊位，输入“很辣很美味，我爱吃”。她很高兴，给了我一个大大的笑容。
它可以填补对话中的空白
如果和你对话的人懂得一点英语（或者你可以说一点对方的语言），这个工具可以让你们的沟通更顺畅。沙发客网在重庆的组织者会讲一些英语，但还不能回答我各种各样有关食物、庙宇、污染和文化的问题。她用我的手机找到了许多更加贴切的词语：“道教”、“缅甸”、“法国兵营”、“汉代砖墙”、“博学”。
禁用“推送服务”
谷歌翻译必须在线使用，而中国的Wi-Fi网络很少。谷歌翻译软件工程师Macduff Hughes说这个软件每翻译一个句子，只会使用200到800字节的流量。这意味着，即使你仅有服务商的国际漫游套餐流量（其实也很高了），几百个句子也只需要1美元左右。（如果你定制一个国际套餐，1美元可以翻译数千个句子。）但是你一定要确保关闭所有的“推送”和自动下载业务，这样在你开启翻译功能时，手机才不会自动下载邮件、更新新闻。
别丢掉你的常用语手册
我随身携带一本《孤独星球中国大陆》常用语手册，我发现它和谷歌翻译软件结合起来很好用。你经常能找到一些常用短语，而且书中的语法内容可以让我规避一些语言陷阱。比如中国人喜欢用“要”来表达将来时，所以“你想要到船上去买票”并不是一个问句，而是一个陈述句“你需要到船上去买票”。
别排斥这个工具
体势表情和常用语手册对我来说很好用呀，而且还更有趣呢。没错，但即使你千方百计地固守老方法，世界还是在不断前进的。我在旅行中有一次遇到一个中国人，在我拿出手机使用翻译软件之前，他先掏出了自己的手机。换句话说，历史的火车已经启动了。随你喜欢带上适合自己的工具，但是不管怎样，想办法不要错过这一班船。
原文：
The Google Translate app in action.The slow boat to Chongqing left at 4 the next morning, according to Tan Kao, a helpful young man who approached me in the bustling port of Fengjie, a Yangtze River town not accustomed to foreign visitors. But his English maxed out there, and I still had no idea how to book a ticket (and was deeply reluctant to return at 3 a.m. without one).
So I plucked my iPhone from my pocket, tapped the icon for the Google Translate app, typed in “Where can I buy a boat ticket?” and hit Go. Chinese characters appeared, and he nodded. I toggled to the Chinese keyboard, handed the phone to him, and watched as he tapped in Roman letters that magically became Chinese characters, and then a full-fledged English sentence: “You want to buy a ticket on board.”
Heading up the Yangtze on $50 a day (watch this blog in the coming weeks for more on that assignment) was intimidating. In China, English speakers are rare at $20-a-night hotels, $2-a-plate restaurants and ferry ports. Signs and menus are indecipherable. And Mandarin is a tonal language – inflection is essential to meaning — so pronouncing sentences from phrasebooks is often futile.
I’ve been watching Google’s translation tools improve over the years, but this trip would be a true test: could it really blunt the trauma of arriving in a country where the average American is instantly rendered illiterate, deaf and mute?
The answer: yes, though knowing your way around it in advance will help. (United Nations interpreters need not fear for their jobs, at least not yet.) Here, then, are my tips, learned the hard way.
Prep Your Phone
The app is easy to use at home, but much harder in a raucous street market or with a long line behind you in a train station. The faster you are, the better, so prepare in advance. If the language you’ll be using has a different writing system, you’ll need to enable the appropriate keyboard for your conversation partner to respond to you (options include Chinese, Bulgarian, Arabic and Korean) — and get used to toggling between them. (On the iPhone, go to Settings — General — Keyboard — Keyboards. Toggle by using the globe symbol on the keyboard.) Once your phrase is translated, rotating the phone to horizontal enlarges it, perfect if the person is not right at your side — in a ticket booth behind glass, for example. (If you can test the whole system out with a friend who speaks (and writes) in the language you are prepping for, all the better.)
Keep Sentences Unambiguous
Automated translation is prone to errors. Reduce the risk by stripping your sentences of words and phrases that could have dual meanings, even if the result sounds stilted. “Can I check my bag until later?” is iffy; “May I leave my suitcase here until 5 p.m.?” is better. When my back was bothering me in Badong, I was worried a massage parlor I found thought I might want something besides an actual massage. To be clear, I typed out “I have pain in my back” and got a written quote of 128 yuan (about $21). “Is there a cheaper service?” lowered it to 48 yuan. For what? “Local push,” came the answer. Close enough. I said yes.
Prepare Instructions
Most teenagers or young adults knew just what to do when I handed them my phone to type in responses. But older adults were not quite as savvy — often trying to draw characters on the screen (which works on many Chinese smartphones). So I pretranslated the phrase “Please type in Pinyin” — referring to Chinese written in standardized Roman form — “and my phone will translate to English,” and starred it, making it quick to retrieve again. This is also a good idea for phrases you might use repeatedly. (“I prefer a room without a squat toilet,” for example.)
Type, Don’t Talk
Google Translate has a voice recognition function, so you can speak to your phone and even have it speak the result. Though this works in theory, in practice it’s a huge hassle. The translation is slower, the voices of many languages robotic. Sure, the app speaks Mandarin in a human voice, but will it understand your taxi driver’s response in a local dialect? (I can assure you that in Wuhan, the answer is no.) The Android version of the app now reads Chinese characters, though I did not test that version.
Don’t Be Shy With the Compliments
Though helpful for emergencies, I found it also worked wonders as a compliment giver when xie xie — “thank you” in Chinese — felt inadequate. So when a fried frog on a stick I bought as a joke turned out to be delicious, I returned to the street vendor displaying the translation of “Very spicy and delicious! I love it!” She loved it. I got a big smile in return.
Use It to Fill Out Conversations
If your conversation partner does speak some English (or you speak some of their language), the app can help fill in the blanks. My Couchsurfing host in Chongqing spoke quite passable English, but not enough to answer my constant questions about foods and temples and pollution and culture. Among the words and phrases that she got across using my phone that she could not have expressed otherwise: “Taoist,” “Myanmar,” “French barracks,” “Han brick rubbings” and “erudite.”
No ‘Pushing’
Google Translate works only when hooked up to a data stream, and in China free Wi-Fi was scarce. But Macduff Hughes, the engineering director for Google Translate, says the app uses just 200 to 800 bytes of data per sentence, which means even if you stick with the major carriers’ default (and absurdly high) international roaming rates, you’ll still get hundreds of translations for a dollar. (With an international plan, that’s thousands.) But you absolutely must be sure all “push” functions and automatic downloads are off, so your phone is not automatically downloading your email or updating your news sites when you activate data roaming to translate.
Don’t Abandon Your Phrasebook
I traveled with a Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebook, and found it worked great in combination with Google Translate. It’s always helpful to speak a few basic phrases, and the grammar section of my book helped me understand possible pitfalls. Knowing that Chinese often use the verb “to want” to express future tense, for example, meant I knew that “You want to buy a ticket on board” was not a question but a statement: “you will buy a ticket on board.”
Don’t Be a Luddite
Pantomiming and phrasebooks have always worked for you in the past, and are more fun anyway? I hear you. But even if you want to stay old-school, the world is moving on without you. At least once a day during my trip, the Chinese broke out their own translation apps before I had a chance to break out mine. In other words, this train has already left the station. Or, to pick a cliché more appropriate to my trip, you don’t want to miss the boat.
哈哈，春节时去柬埔寨，我也用了手机翻译软件，不过我用的是有道，把手机摄像头对准英文菜单，屏幕就会自动翻译，不过我向你保证，你根本看不懂翻译出来的是什么玩意儿，当然，这不能怪翻译软件，而是因为在所有国家里，菜单是最难翻译的。比如说，你可以试着翻译一下“四季小炒”或者“东坡肉”。
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