北外英语翻译资格中级笔译试题).doc

教育部全国翻译证书考试2001年试题（中级笔译）2001年北外英语翻译资格中级笔译试题passage 1artificial speechbecause speech is the most convenient form of communication, in the future we want essentially natural conversations with computers. the primary point of contact will be a simple device that will act as our window on the world. you will simply talk to it. the device will be permanently connected to the internet and will beep relevant information up to you as it comes in.just how quickly people will adapt to a voice-based internet world is uncertain. many believe that, initially at least, we will need similar conventions for the voice to those we use at present on screen: click, back, forward, and so on. but soon you will undoubtedly be able to interact by voice with all those it-based services you currently connect with over the internet by means of a keyboard. this will help the internet serve the entire population, not just techno-freaks.changes like this will encompass the whole world. because english is the language of science, it will probably remain the language in which the technology is most advanced, but most speech-recognition techniques are transferable to other languages provided there is sufficient motivation to undertake the work.within ten years we will have computers that respond to goal-directed conversations, but for a computer to have a conversation that takes into account human social behaviour is probably 50 years off. we’re not going to be chatting to the big screen in the living room just yet.there are those in the it community who believe that current techniques will eventually hit a brick wall. personally, i believe that incremental developments in performance are more likely. but it’s true that by about 2040 or so, computer architectures will need to become highly parallel if performance is to keep increasing. perhaps that will inspire some radically new approaches to speech understanding that will supplant the methods we’re developing now. small vendors engage in si