據(jù)路透社報(bào)道，隨著谷歌助理上周開始大范圍登陸安卓設(shè)備，語(yǔ)音助手行業(yè)的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)進(jìn)入白熱化?，F(xiàn)在，蘋果、亞馬遜、微軟以及谷歌都在提供能夠接受用戶指令的虛擬助手。專家表示，要想打贏語(yǔ)音助手大戰(zhàn)，必須跨越語(yǔ)言障礙的鴻溝，而蘋果Siri作為業(yè)內(nèi)老前輩，已經(jīng)遙遙領(lǐng)先其他幾家語(yǔ)音助手，它不僅會(huì)說(shuō)36個(gè)國(guó)家的21種語(yǔ)言，如今還要學(xué)習(xí)上海方言。

With the broad release of Google Assistant last week, the voice-assistant wars are in full swing, with Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp and now Alphabet Inc's Google all offering electronic assistants to take your commands.
隨著谷歌公司上周全面推出谷歌助手服務(wù)，蘋果、亞馬遜、微軟以及谷歌都推出了接受人類指令的語(yǔ)音助手服務(wù)，一場(chǎng)語(yǔ)音助手戰(zhàn)已全面打響。

Siri會(huì)21種語(yǔ)言 現(xiàn)在將學(xué)說(shuō)上海話

Siri is the oldest of the bunch, and researchers including Oren Etzioni, chief executive officer of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle, said Apple has squandered its lead when it comes to understanding speech and answering questions.
Siri是這些服務(wù)中的老前輩。許多研究人員，包括位于西雅圖的艾倫人工智能研究所的首席執(zhí)行官奧倫?埃齊奧尼在內(nèi)，都認(rèn)為在語(yǔ)音識(shí)別和回答問題方面，蘋果的領(lǐng)先優(yōu)勢(shì)已消耗殆盡。

But there is at least one thing Siri can do that the other assistants cannot: speak 21 languages localized for 36 countries, a very important capability in a smartphone market where most sales are outside the United States.
不過，至少有一件事是Siri可以但其競(jìng)爭(zhēng)對(duì)手做不到的，即會(huì)說(shuō)36個(gè)國(guó)家的21種語(yǔ)言。這個(gè)功能在智能手機(jī)市場(chǎng)至關(guān)重要，因?yàn)榇蟛糠种悄苁謾C(jī)都是銷往美國(guó)以外的地區(qū)的。

Microsoft Cortana, by contrast, has eight languages tailored for 13 countries. Google's Assistant, which began in its Pixel phone but has moved to other Android devices, speaks four languages. Amazon's Alexa features only English and German. Siri will even soon start to learn Shanghainese, a special dialect of Wu Chinese spoken only around Shanghai.
微軟“小娜”為13個(gè)國(guó)家定制了8種語(yǔ)言。谷歌語(yǔ)音助手會(huì)說(shuō)4種語(yǔ)言，該服務(wù)一開始只在谷歌自家的Pixel手機(jī)里有，后來(lái)又應(yīng)用到其他安卓設(shè)備。亞馬遜的Alexa只會(huì)說(shuō)英語(yǔ)和德語(yǔ)。而Siri甚至馬上要開始學(xué)說(shuō)上海話了，這是一種只在上海及其周邊地區(qū)使用的吳語(yǔ)方言。

The language issue shows the type of hurdle that digital assistants still need to clear if they are to become ubiquitous tools for operating smartphones and other devices.
這說(shuō)明，智能助手要想成為無(wú)所不在的智能手機(jī)和其他設(shè)備操控工具，就必須跨越語(yǔ)言的障礙。

At Microsoft, an editorial team of 29 people works to customise Cortana for local markets. Google and Amazon said they plan to bring more languages to their assistants but declined to comment further.
微軟公司一個(gè)29人的編輯團(tuán)隊(duì)正著手推出面向地方市場(chǎng)的定制“小娜”服務(wù)。谷歌和亞馬遜都表示計(jì)劃給它們的語(yǔ)音助手添加更多種語(yǔ)言，但兩家公司均拒絕透露更多消息。

你知道蘋果是怎么教Siri學(xué)習(xí)方言嗎？

At Apple, the company starts working on a new language by bringing in humans to read passages in a range of accents and dialects, which are then transcribed by hand so the computer has an exact representation of the spoken text to learn from, said Alex Acero, head of the speech team at Apple. Apple also captures a range of sounds in a variety of voices. From there, an acoustic model is built that tries to predict words sequences.
蘋果語(yǔ)音團(tuán)隊(duì)負(fù)責(zé)人亞歷克斯?阿賽羅說(shuō)，當(dāng)公司研發(fā)人員開始教Siri一門新的語(yǔ)言時(shí)，會(huì)讓真人用各種方言和口音來(lái)閱讀文本段落，然后再手動(dòng)轉(zhuǎn)錄，這樣計(jì)算機(jī)就可以擁有準(zhǔn)確學(xué)習(xí)樣本。蘋果還會(huì)從不同的聲音中捕捉各種語(yǔ)音。然后，蘋果會(huì)建立起一個(gè)聲學(xué)模型，并通過這個(gè)模型開始嘗試預(yù)測(cè)字符序列。

Then Apple deploys "dictation mode," its text-to-speech translator, in the new language, Acero said. When customers use dictation mode, Apple captures a small percentage of the audio recordings and makes them anonymous. The recordings, complete with background noise and mumbled words, are transcribed by humans, a process that helps cut the speech recognition error rate in half.
蘋果隨后會(huì)在新語(yǔ)言中部署“聽寫模式”，這是一種文本和語(yǔ)音之間的翻譯器。當(dāng)用戶使用聽寫模式時(shí)，蘋果會(huì)捕獲音頻錄音中的一小部分，然后對(duì)其匿名處理。由于這些錄音有背景噪音以及模糊不清的詞語(yǔ)，將會(huì)由專人轉(zhuǎn)錄，這一過程可以將語(yǔ)音識(shí)別的錯(cuò)誤率降低一半。

After enough data has been gathered and a voice actor has been recorded to play Siri in a new language, Siri is released with answers to what Apple estimates will be the most common questions, Acero said. Once released, Siri learns more about what real-world users ask and is updated every two weeks with more tweaks.
阿賽羅說(shuō)，在收集了足夠的數(shù)據(jù)，并讓配音員為Siri錄制了新語(yǔ)言之后，Siri就會(huì)向公眾開放，剛發(fā)布時(shí)Siri能夠回答蘋果認(rèn)為最常見的問題。發(fā)布之后，Siri將會(huì)從用戶的實(shí)際問題中學(xué)習(xí)，并且會(huì)每?jī)芍芨乱淮?，作出一些調(diào)整。

But script-writing does not scale, said Charles Jolley, creator of an intelligent assistant named Ozlo. “You can't hire enough writers to come up with the system you'd need in every language. You have to synthesize the answers,” he said. That is years off, he said.
不過，智能助理Ozlo的創(chuàng)始人查爾斯?喬利表示，撰寫腳本無(wú)法做到規(guī)模化，“你不可能聘請(qǐng)足夠多的作者為每一種語(yǔ)言撰寫需要的腳本，你必須人工合成答案。”他認(rèn)為，這還需要多年的時(shí)間。

The founders of Viv, a startup founded by Siri's original creators that Samsung acquired last year, is working on just that.
三星去年收購(gòu)了“Siri之父”創(chuàng)建的人工智能公司Viv，這家初創(chuàng)公司的創(chuàng)始人正在著手解決這個(gè)問題。

"Viv was built to specifically address the scaling issue for intelligent assistants," said Dag Kittlaus, the CEO and co-founder of Viv. "The only way to leapfrog today's limited functionality versions is to open the system up and let the world teach them."
Viv的聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人兼CEO戴格?吉特拉斯說(shuō)：“Viv旨在專攻智能助理的規(guī)?；瘑栴}，要想跨過目前版本的功能局限，唯一的方法就是開放系統(tǒng)，讓世界來(lái)教它們。”

英文來(lái)源：路透社
翻譯&編輯：董靜
審校：yaning