VOA慢速英语2020 Facebook开发出100种语言的机器翻译系统

Facebook has developed the first machine learning model that can translate between any two of 100 languages without going into English first.

Facebook开发了第一个可以在100种语言的任意两种之间进行翻译，而无需先翻译成英语的机器学习模型。

Facebook says the new multilingual machine translation model was created to help its more than two billion users worldwide. The company is still testing the translation system – which it calls M2M-100 - and hopes to add it to different products in the future.

Facebook表示，创建这一新的多语言机器翻译模型是为了帮助该公司在全球超过20亿的用户。该公司仍在测试这款名为M2M-100的翻译系统，并希望将来能将其添加到其它产品中。

The social media service says it has made the system open source -- meaning its computer code will be freely available for others to copy or change.

这家社交媒体公司称已经将该系统开源，这意味着其计算机代码将可供他人免费复制或修改。

Angela Fan, a research assistant at Facebook, explained the new machine translation model this week on one of the company's websites. She said its development represented a "milestone¹" in progress after years of "foundational work in machine translation."

Facebook研究助理安吉拉·范本周在该公司的一个网站上解释了这种新的机器翻译模型。她称该模型的开发代表着多年“机器翻译基础工作”进程上的一座“里程碑。”

Fan said the model produces better results than other machine learning systems that depend on English to help in the translation process. The other systems use it as an intermediate² step -- like a bridge -- to translate between two non-English languages.

范女士表示，与其它在翻译过程中依赖英语帮助的机器学习系统相比，该系统能够生成更好的翻译结果。其它系统将英语作为两种非英语语言之间进行翻译的桥梁。

One example would be a translation from Chinese to French. Fan noted³ that many machine translation models begin by translating from Chinese to English first, and then from English to French. This is done "because English training data is the most widely available," she said. But such a method can lead to mistakes in translation.

其中一个例子是从中文到法语的翻译。范女士指出，许多机器翻译模型先将中文翻译成英语，然后再将英语翻译成法文。她说，这样做的原因“是因为英语训练数据是最广泛的。”但是这种做法可能会导致翻译错误。

"Our model directly trains on Chinese to French data to better preserve meaning," Fan said. Facebook said the system outperformed English-centered systems in a widely used system that uses data to measure the quality of machine translations.

范女士表示：“我们的模型直接训练中文到法语的数据，以更好地保留语义。”Facebook表示，该模型在一款用于衡量机器翻译质量的系统中的表现要优于以英语为中心的翻译模型。

Facebook says about two-thirds of its users communicate in a language other than English. The company already carries out an average of 20 billion translations every day on Facebook's News Feed. But it faces a huge test with many users publishing massive⁴ amounts of content in more than 160 languages.

Facebook表示，该公司大约2/3的用户使用英语以外的语言进行交流。该公司已经在Facebook网站的新闻源上平均每天进行200亿次翻译。但是它面临了巨大的考验，许多用户发布了超过160种语言的大量内容。

The development team trained, or directed, the new model on a data set of 7.5 billion sentence pairs for 100 languages. In addition, the system was trained on a total of 2,200 language directions. Facebook said this is 10 times the number on the best machine translation models in the past.

该开发团队用100种语言的75亿对句子的数据集训练或指导这款新模型。此外，该系统共接受了2200种语言方向的训练。Facebook表示，这在数量上是过去最佳机器翻译模型的10倍。

One difficulty the team faced was trying to develop an effective machine translation system for language combinations that are not widely used. Facebook calls these "low-resource languages." The data used to create the new model was collected from content available on the internet. But there is limited internet data on low-resource languages.

该团队面临的困难之一是试图为未广泛使用的语言组合开发有效的机器翻译系统。Facebook称这些是“低资源语言。”这些用于创建新模型的数据是从互联网上的内容中收集到的。但是，低资源语言在互联网上的数据有限。

To deal with this problem, Facebook said it used a method called back-translation. This method can create "synthetic⁵ translations" to increase the amount of data used to train on low-resource languages.

为了解决这个问题，Facebook称其利用了一种名为“反向翻译”的办法。这种办法可以创建“合成翻译，”以增加用于训练低资源语言的数据量。

For now, the company says, it plans to continue exploring new language research methods while working to improve the new model. No date has been set for launching the translation system on Facebook.

该公司表示，目前它计划继续探索新的语言研究方法，同时努力改进这款新模型。该公司尚未确定在Facebook网站上启用该翻译系统的日期。

But Angela Fan said the new system marks an important step for Facebook, especially for the times we live in. "Breaking language barriers through machine language translation is one of the most important ways to bring people together, provide authoritative⁶ information on COVID-19, and keep them safe from harmful content," she said.

但是范女士表示，该新系统标志着Facebook迈出了重要的一步，尤其是对于我们所处的时代来说。她说：“通过机器翻译打破语言障碍，这是将人们团结在一起，提供新冠肺炎权威信息，并使得他们免受有害内容毒害的最重要手段之一。”

1 milestone   

n.里程碑；划时代的事件

参考例句：

• The film proved to be a milestone in the history of cinema.事实证明这部影片是电影史上的一个里程碑。
• I think this is a very important milestone in the relations between our two countries.我认为这是我们两国关系中一个十分重要的里程碑。

2 intermediate   

adj.中间的，居间的，中级的；n.中间体，媒介物

参考例句：

• This country is now at an intermediate stage of development.这个国家目前正处于发展的中间阶段。
• Gray is intermediate between black and white.灰色介于黑色和白色之间。

3 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

4 massive   

adj.巨大的，大规模的，大量的，大范围的

参考例句：

• A massive sea search has failed to find any survivors.经过大规模的海上搜救仍未找到幸存者。
• He drank a massive amount of alcohol.他喝了大量的烈酒。

5 synthetic   

adj.合成的，人工的；综合的；n.人工制品

参考例句：

• We felt the salesman's synthetic friendliness.我们感觉到那位销售员的虚情假意。
• It's a synthetic diamond.这是人造钻石。

6 authoritative   

adj.有权威的，可相信的；命令式的；官方的

参考例句：

• David speaks in an authoritative tone.大卫以命令的口吻说话。
• Her smile was warm but authoritative.她的笑容很和蔼，同时又透着威严。