For many spouses, smartphone use is a point of tension. But for David Duda and Hong Liang, a couple in New Haven, Conn., the technology is so essential that they own eight external battery packs. If their phones die, so does their ability to communicate.

对于很多夫妻而言，使用智能手机是引发矛盾的导火索。但对于康涅狄格州纽黑文市的戴维·杜达与梁红（音）夫妇来说，这项技术却至关重要——他们足足备了八个外接移动电源。一旦手机没电，他们就彻底无法交流。

Mr. Duda, 62, speaks English, and Ms. Liang, 57, speaks Mandarin. They rely on a free smartphone app from Microsoft, called Translator, to render a text translation of what they say — like movie subtitles but for daily life.

62岁的杜达只说英语，57岁的梁红只讲普通话。他们依靠微软公司一款名为“翻译”的免费手机应用将彼此的话语转换成文字翻译，就像电影字幕，却是应用于实时的生活中。

Though they have been married for three years, they walked down the street on a recent December afternoon with their arms linked like newlyweds. This was out of necessity as much as affection: One of them chatted and navigated while the other’s eyes were locked on the phone, reading translated remarks.

去年12月的一个下午，尽管已经结婚三年，两人仍挽着胳膊走在街上，宛如新婚夫妇。这既是出于爱意，也是出于必要：一人说话、引路，另一人则紧盯手机阅读译文。

When Mr. Duda told a joke, he held his chortle for a few seconds until Ms. Liang was able to read it.

杜达讲笑话时，总会忍住笑等上几秒，直到梁红看完翻译。

Communicating this way requires close attention. Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang can’t half-listen to each other or walk away while talking. There are no shouted conversations from the shower. When they want to really connect, they spend hours on the couch or lying in bed, going back and forth until they feel sure they understand what the other has said.

这种交流方式需要全神贯注。杜达和梁红不能心不在焉地听对方说话，也不能边说话边走开；没法淋浴时大声交谈。想要真正交流时，他们会在沙发上或床上，一聊就是几个小时，反复确认彼此完全理解对方的意思。

“The translator makes you have to be more in the moment because you’ve got to be reading it and listening,” Mr. Duda said. “You have to pay attention more, which obviously is a good thing when you’re relating to your spouse.”

“翻译工具会让你更关注当下，因为你既要阅读又要倾听，”杜达说。“你必须更专注，这对夫妻相处来说显然是好事。”

“He pays attention to all the details and takes good care of me. He really knows and sees what I need,” Ms. Liang said in Mandarin, as translated by a human interpreter. (Machine translation: He is very attentive. He thought about anything for me, so I was impressed by a lot of his details.)

“没有人这么细心地观察过我，或者是为我考虑过任何事情，所以他的很多细节方面打动了我，”梁红用中文说道，人类口译员这样翻译。（机器翻译版本则是：他替我想得很周全，许多细节都令我感动。）

Automated translation has advanced enough in recent years that it is being used by people whose attraction transcends fluency, like Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang, as well as travelers to foreign lands and companies hoping to appeal to new markets and audiences.

近年来，自动翻译技术已足够先进，开始被杜达、梁红这样这样超越语言障碍的恋人使用，也服务于海外旅行者，以及希望开拓新市场、吸引新受众的企业。

I used Apple AirPods, which have real-time language translation, as well as Microsoft Translator to interview Ms. Liang. I was able to follow much of what she said, though the delay made the conversation challenging. And there were key misunderstandings, which I learned about only when I later asked a professional interpreter to review our conversation.

采访梁红时，我使用了支持实时语言翻译的苹果AirPods和微软翻译软件。尽管延迟让对话变得困难，但我仍能大致听懂她的话。不过对话中出现了几处关键误解，直到后来我请专业译员回看对话内容才发现。

“It’s wonderful that people are able to communicate with a much wider range of people than they could before,” said Lera Boroditsky, a professor of cognitive science at University of California, San Diego. “Those translations are going to be imperfect,” she said, “but having access is better than not having access.”

“人们现在能和比以往更广泛的人群交流，这是件了不起的事情，”加州大学圣迭戈分校认知科学教授莱拉·博罗迪茨基说。“这些翻译并不完美，但是有接触总比完全无法交流要好。”

The idea of a universal translator has long existed in science fiction — how else could the crew of the Enterprise on “Star Trek” talk to alien species? The real-world versions on offer from Microsoft and other companies can assist with 100 or so of the 7,000 languages spoken globally, seemingly realizing the dream of a world where billions of people can understand each other. Or at least muddle through.

万能翻译工具的构想早已存在于科幻作品中——不然《星际迷航》里企业号的船员要怎么和外星物种交流？微软等公司推出的现实版翻译工具能覆盖全球7000种语言中的约100种，似乎实现了令数十亿人相互理解的梦想，至少能令人们彼此勉强沟通。

A more intimate relationship sustained with apps seems less fathomable. “A happy marriage is a long conversation that always seems too short,” wrote the French author André Maurois. Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang’s conversation started at an opportune time, when technological tools existed to facilitate it, and they had developed the patience to use them.

靠手机应用维系一段亲密关系，听起来更加令人难以置信。法国作家安德烈·莫鲁瓦曾写道：“幸福的婚姻是场总嫌太短的漫长对话。”杜达和梁红的交谈，恰逢技术工具足以支撑交流的时代，而他们也拥有使用这些工具的耐心。

“It’s kind of fun for us,” Mr. Duda said. “If people weren’t in love, it would be much more frustrating.”

“对我们来说这还挺有趣的，”杜达说。“如果不是在恋人之间，那就会让人沮丧得多。”

Love in Translation

 翻译里的爱情

Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang met in Xian, China, in the fall of 2019.

杜达和梁红于2019年秋天在中国西安相识。

Mr. Duda’s brother was going there on a work trip, and he tagged along to see the region’s famous Terracotta soldiers and Buddhist temples. His brother’s business partner suggested that her friend, Ms. Liang, drive Mr. Duda around. By the end of the week, Mr. Duda was smitten.

当时杜达的兄弟要去西安出差，他便一同前往，想去看看当地著名的兵马俑和佛教寺庙。他兄弟的生意伙伴提议，让她的朋友梁红开车带杜达四处逛逛。一周行程结束时，杜达已对梁红倾心。

“She is the most joyous, happy person you’ll ever meet,” he said. Mr. Duda thought that there was chemistry between them, and tried to kiss Ms. Liang goodbye before his departure. Surprised, she turned her cheek.

“她是世上最开朗快乐的人，”杜达说。他觉得两人之间有化学反应。临别前，他试图吻别梁红。她猝不及防，侧过脸去。

But she was interested, and so, after Mr. Duda returned to New Haven, where he owns a bookstore, they stayed in touch via WeChat, a Chinese messaging app. They communicated by text in English, with Ms. Liang copying and pasting the messages to an English-Chinese translator.

但她其实对杜达颇有好感。因此，当杜达回到纽黑文经营他在当地的书店后，两人通过中国即时通讯应用微信保持联系。他们用英文打字聊天，梁红则把消息复制粘贴到英汉翻译工具里翻译。

A couple of months after they met, the world shut down because of Covid. Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang, both divorced with adult children, found themselves isolated. They started messaging each other daily, talking about their personal histories, their failed marriages, their families. With pandemic restrictions forcing retailers to close, Mr. Duda’s work turned to preparing books for online shipment, and he started working at night, which meant he was awake at the same time as Ms. Liang.

相识数月后，新冠疫情让世界停摆。当时杜达和梁红都是离异人士，子女均已成年，两人都陷入了隔离状态。他们开始每天发消息，聊各自的人生经历、失败的婚姻，还有他们的家人。疫情管控迫使零售商关门，杜达的工作转为整理书籍用于线上发货，他开始在夜间工作，这让他的作息和梁红刚好同步。

“We spent the next two years on our phones getting to know each other better,” Mr. Duda said.

“接下来的两年，我们天天靠手机互相了解，”杜达说。

杜达与梁红对翻译技术的依赖程度极高，为此他们备着八个外接移动电源。

In September 2022, when China relaxed pandemic travel restrictions, Ms. Liang booked a one-way flight to the United States. She was nervous: Was everything Mr. Duda had said what she understood it to be?

2022年9月，中国放宽疫情旅行限制，梁红订了一张单程机票飞往美国。她心中很忐忑：杜达说的一切，真的和她理解的一样吗？

Mr. Duda met Ms. Liang at the airport holding a sign that said, in Chinese characters, “Love of my life.”

杜达在机场接她，手里举着一块牌子，上面用汉字写着：“我生命中的挚爱”。

“I was deeply touched, because at the airport in front of so many people, he did something that touched my heart,” Ms. Liang recalled. (Machine translation: “I think this is a very, very romantic thing, and in front of so many people at the airport.”)

“我觉得这是一个非常非常浪漫的事情，而且是在机场当着那么多人的面，”梁红回忆。（机器翻译：我觉得这是非常非常浪漫的事，在机场那么多人面前。）

‘You were going to die?’

 “你快要死了？”

Automated language translation has been a goal of computer scientists since at least the 1950s, when Georgetown University researchers designed a system that could translate a couple of hundred Russian words into English. A meaningful translation, however, requires more than a word-for-word swap. Grammar and structure vary between languages, and words can have different meanings depending on context, not to mention the problem of idioms like “it’s a piece of cake” that cannot be translated literally.

至少从20世纪50年代起，自动语言翻译就已是计算机科学家的目标——当时乔治城大学的研究人员设计出一套系统，能将几百个俄语单词翻译成英语。但是有意义的翻译远不止逐字替换。不同语言的语法和结构千差万别，单词含义随语境变化，更不用说“it’s a piece of cake”（小菜一碟）这类无法直译的习语。

These gnarly challenges appealed to machine learning researchers: Could computers ingest language and learn to decipher it?

这些棘手的难题吸引了机器学习研究者：计算机能否吸收语言，并学会解读它？

In the early 2000s, Google and Microsoft developed web-based translation services using statistical approach, but the major breakthrough came a decade later. In a paper, Google researchers described a new technique for processing enormous data sets, which ushered in a new era of artificial intelligence, including chatbots like ChatGPT. This technique is fundamentally about language processing, and the paper was about how well it worked at translating English into French and German.

21世纪初，谷歌和微软利用预测性软件开发了网页翻译服务，但重大突破出现在十年后。谷歌研究人员在一篇论文中介绍了一种处理海量数据集的新技术，开启了人工智能的新时代，催生出ChatGPT等聊天机器人。这项技术的核心是语言处理，论文还展示了它在英译法、英译德方面的出色表现。

Since then, automated systems have improved and can translate text with impressive accuracy. But using A.I. to translate words people speak aloud works less well.

从那以后，自动翻译系统不断进步，文本翻译的准确率已相当可观。但用AI翻译人们的口语，效果仍然略逊一筹。

Communicating on WeChat, Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang had sometimes managed to forget they spoke different languages. In person, communication proved more challenging.

在微信上聊天时，杜达和梁红有时甚至会忘记两人说不同的语言。可面对面交流时，难度却大了不少。

First they tried a hand-held translator that cost $600. They also tried earbuds that would speak translations into their ears. But these devices had to be connected to Wi-Fi, and any background noise made them useless. In the end, they settled on speaking into the Microsoft Translator app that made text translations of what they said. They haven’t tried asking a generative A.I. chatbot to translate for them, though the makers of ChatGPT and Claude have cited translation as a popular use for their products.

起初，他们试过一台600美元的手持翻译机，又试过可将译文传入耳中的耳机。但这些设备必须连接Wi-Fi，背景里稍有噪音就彻底失灵。最终，他们选择用微软翻译，对着手机说话就能生成文字翻译。他们还没试过用生成式AI聊天机器人翻译，尽管ChatGPT和Claude的开发者都将翻译列为产品的热门应用场景。

The transcript of their married life is now held by a giant corporation, but Mr. Duda said it didn’t trouble him. He even granted Microsoft permission to review his audio clips to improve the technology.

杜达和梁红婚姻生活的对话记录如今由一家巨头公司持有，但杜达表示自己并不介意。他甚至授权微软调阅他的语音片段，以改进技术。

Translator could use improvement. I asked Wallace Chen, a professor of Chinese-English translation and interpretation at Middlebury College, to review my conversation with the couple. For simple exchanges, the A.I. did OK, he said. But it faltered on longer ones.

但“翻译”这款应用程序确实有待改进。我请明德学院的中英翻译与口译教授陈瑞清审阅了我与这对夫妇的交谈。他说，面对简短交流，人工智能表现尚可，但在处理较长的句子时，它就开始力不从心了。

For example, while describing how Mr. Duda greeted her at the airport, Ms. Liang said that she got Covid shortly after her arrival and felt so awful she thought she was dying.

比如梁红描述杜达去机场接机的情景时提到，自己抵美后不久便感染新冠，病得厉害，甚至以为自己快要死了。

But those were not the words I saw on the screen. The app’s translation had her saying that she got a “new crown” and thought she was going to die. Confused, I asked if she meant that his gesture of carrying the loving sign was so romantic she could die.

但我当时在屏幕上看到的并不是这些。应用程序的翻译是她得到了一个“新皇冠”，并认为自己快要死了。我当时一头雾水，还问她是不是想说他举着爱心牌迎接她的举动浪漫得要死。

“No, no, no,” she said. And she repeated herself, but we still didn’t get it.

“不是不是不是，”她连声否认。她又重复了一遍，但我们仍如坠五里雾中。

A month later, watching video of the exchange, Dr. Chen explained: The app had translated the Chinese term for Covid-19 — novel corona — as “new crown.” Mr. Duda had stayed next to her throughout her illness, she said, and his attentiveness had deepened her feelings for him, which is why she had brought it up.

一个月后，陈瑞清在回看这段对话视频时道出原委：这款应用将中文的“新冠”直译成英文的“new crown”（新皇冠）。梁红说，患病期间杜达始终相伴在侧，那份体贴令她情意愈笃——这正是她提及此事的缘由。

There were other communication failures. When Ms. Liang’s answers ran long, the speech-to-text transcription would fail to keep up with her, missing words or entire sentences. It was like a phone call where the sound cuts out and results in gibberish.

沟通失败的情况还不止于此。梁红作答稍长时，语音转文字功能就跟不上了，会漏遗漏字词乃至整句话。这就像通话信号中断，最后出来的全是莫名其妙的话。

Chris Wendt, a former group program manager at Microsoft who worked on Translator for two decades, said, “The person speaking needs to verify what they said.”

曾在微软参与“翻译”开发二十余载的前项目经理克里斯·温特表示：“讲话者必须确认自己的发言已被准确识别。”

This means looking at the app while you’re talking, not at the person you’re talking to, to make sure it accurately captures your words.

这意味着你在说话时得盯着这款应用程序，以确保它准确记录了你的话，而不是盯着你的交流对象。

This was news to the couple. “Why didn’t they tell us that two years ago?” Mr. Duda said.

这对夫妇闻之愕然。“两年前他们怎么不告诉我们？”杜达叹道。

Rendering speech into text is challenging even without translating to another language: Microphone quality, ambient noise or people talking over each other can all interfere with accurate speech recognition, said Philipp Koehn, a pioneer in machine translation who teaches at Johns Hopkins University.

即便不涉及语言翻译，将语音转化为文字也极具挑战性。约翰斯·霍普金斯大学机器翻译领域的先驱菲利普·科恩指出，麦克风的音质、环境噪音或多人同时说话都会干扰语音识别的准确性。

And spoken language is more varied than written text. There are accents and dialects, meaningful hesitations that can’t be conveyed, emotion and tone that is lost. People talk fast, or ramble, or trail off on a half-formed thought.

口语比书面语更为庞杂多样。它包含口音、方言、还有意味深长、无法传达的停顿，以及易于流失的情感和语调。人们说话时可能语速飞快，或者东拉西扯，或思绪未竟便渐无声息。

家中墙上贴着一张英语字母发音表，用来帮助梁红练习英文字母的发音。

Dr. Chen, the professor and interpreter from Middlebury, said automated translators should be used with caution “in situations where every word matters.”

明德学院教授、译员陈瑞清提醒，在“每个字都很重要”的场合，使用自动翻译务须审慎。

Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang know the translator often gets their meaning wrong. They have an expression for when it happens: bù bù hǎo, pronounced “boo boo how,” a play on a Chinese phrase that means “not good.” When it happens, they try again, or use body language, or pull up a photo on the internet for illustration. Words sometimes fail them, as they do us all.

杜达和梁红深知翻译工具经常误解他们的意思。每当这种情况发生时，他们会就会说“bù bù hǎo”，这是在玩中文“不好”的谐音梗。遇到这种翻译翻车的时候，他们会再次尝试，或者使用肢体语言，又或者在网上找张图片来示意。文字有时会让他们感到词不达意，正如我们所有人都会遇到的那样。

Big Ambitions

宏愿

Microsoft declined to answer questions, but I asked Mr. Wendt, the former program manager, what his team had in mind when they created Translator. Did they imagine it could sustain a marriage?

微软婉拒采访，但我询问了前项目经理温特，他的团队在开发“翻译”时初衷是什么。他们是否想过，有朝一日它能支撑一段婚姻？

“That was the intent,” he said. “We thought it was possible.”

“那正是我们的本意，”他说。“我们相信这是可能的。”

He and his co-workers had big ambitions; they thought they could connect the world by breaking down language barriers. In 2014, Microsoft demonstrated its ability to do simultaneous translation with a Skype call between two schoolgirls, one in Seattle and one in Mexico City. The faces of the girls — and their classmates — lit up with amazement as a computer-generated voice spoke their words in Spanish or English.

他与同事们怀抱宏愿：他们认为可以通过打破语言障碍来连接世界。2014年，微软通过两名女学生（分别在西雅图和墨西哥城）之间的Skype通话展示了同步翻译能力。当电脑生成的声音将她们的话语转化为西班牙语或英语时，女孩们和她们同学的脸上都绽放出惊奇的笑容。

Since then, translation has become a $31 billion industry, according to the market intelligence firm Slator. In the last year, social media platforms including YouTube and Instagram have released tools for creators to automatically translate and dub their videos into other languages. Amazon is testing “A.I.-aided dubbing” of foreign-language movies into English and Spanish and allowing authors to translate their self-published books on Kindle using A.I. Reddit has translated all the content on its site into 30 different languages. Many video call services offer real-time translation to paying users.

据市场情报公司Slator称，自那时起，翻译已发展成为一个价值310亿美元的产业。去年，包括YouTube和Instagram在内的社交媒体平台都发布了工具，供创作者自动翻译其视频并进行配音。亚马逊正在测试用“AI辅助配音”将外语电影转为英语和西班牙语对白，并允许作者在Kindle上利用AI翻译自出版书籍。Reddit已将其网站上的所有内容翻译成了30种不同的语言。许多视频通话服务也向付费用户提供实时翻译功能。

Mr. Wendt compared A.I. translation to GPS, which powers mobile navigation apps.

温特将AI翻译比作驱动手机导航应用程序的GPS。

“When you have GPS, you’re not afraid of getting lost,” said Mr. Wendt, who uses the Translator app when he travels. “It enables you to go into situations you would not normally go into.”

“有了GPS，你就不再害怕迷路，”温特说道。他在旅行时也会使用“翻译”应用，“它能让你勇敢地进入那些通常不敢涉足的境地。”

Within two months of Ms. Liang’s arrival, Mr. Duda knew he wanted her to stay. During Thanksgiving dinner with his extended family, he got down on one knee and attempted to propose in Chinese.

梁红抵美不到两个月，杜达就认定自己想让她留下来。感恩节家宴上，他单膝跪地，尝试用中文向她求婚。

Ms. Liang did not understand his words, but the meaning of the kneeling was clear. They married a month later.

梁红没听懂他的话，但跪下的意思再明白不过。一个月后，他们结为夫妻。

Their lives are not so different from those of other couples: They eat out, go biking, take beach walks and watch shows with Chinese subtitles. (They liked “Ted Lasso.”) But in one way, they might be unusual: In three years of marriage, they have not had a fight. A heated marital spat is often fueled by a rapid exchange of barbs that would be difficult through Translator.

他们的生活与寻常夫妻并无二致：外出用餐、骑车兜风、海边漫步、看带中文字幕的剧集（《足球教练》是他们的心头好）。但有一点或许与众不同：结婚三载，他们从未吵过架。夫妻间的激烈争执往往在双方的唇枪舌剑中火上浇油，而通过“翻译”应用程序，这太难了。

“Maybe the best way to have a lasting marriage is to speak different languages,” Mr. Duda joked.

“或许，长久婚姻的秘诀就是说不同的语言，”杜达打趣道。

That both Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang were older and divorced when they met has helped their communication, they said. They have experienced how a marriage can go wrong and better understand the workings of a happy one. And they are attentive to body language. Ms. Liang said that Mr. Duda’s facial expressions and gestures tell her more about his emotions than Translator does.

他们表示，两人相遇时都已较为年长且有过离异经历，这反而有助于沟通。他们都经历过婚姻如何触礁，因此更懂得幸福婚姻的经营之道。同时，他们对肢体语言格外留意。梁红说，比起“翻译”应用程序，杜达的面部表情和动作更能让她读懂他的情绪。

“These translation apps struggle with a lot of things like metaphors, sense of humor, tone register, cultural references,” said Per Urlaub, a professor and the director of global languages at M.I.T. But, he added, the apps “are meaningful and functional” for Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang.

“这些翻译应用程序在隐喻、幽默感、语气分寸、文化典故等诸多方面都表现得不尽如人意，”麻省理工学院全球语言项目主任、教授珀·乌尔劳布指出。但他也表示，对杜达和梁红而言，这类应用“是有意义且实用的”。

“Technology is making intimacy possible under conditions where it otherwise would not exist,” he said. “In this case, I feel that the proof is in the pudding.”

“技术让原本不可能的亲密关系成为可能，”他说。“从这个案例看，我觉得事实胜于雄辩。”

‘Love Actually’ … but Actually

《真爱至上》……但现实中……

Anyone who has seen “Love Actually” has an expectation of how this story should have gone: When a couple in that rom-com have chemistry and a language barrier, they both hit the books to become fluent.

但凡看过《真爱至上》的人，大约都会为这类故事预设一个走向：那部浪漫喜剧里的男女主角产生了化学反应但存在语言障碍，于是双双埋头苦学，终至精通对方语言。

Mr. Duda is trying to learn basic Mandarin from children’s books and apps like Duolingo. Ms. Liang, who works as a masseuse and acupuncturist, took an English class when she first arrived in New Haven, and also uses language learning apps. But they estimate that they know only 200 words in the other’s language. Mr. Duda said he felt too old to become fluent in a new language.

杜达也在尝试靠儿童绘本和多邻国之类的应用学习基础的汉语普通话。梁红从事按摩针灸工作，初到纽黑文时上过英语课，也用语言学习应用程序。但据他们估算，两人掌握对方语言的词汇量仅约200个。杜达说，自己这把年纪，怕是没法流利掌握一门新语言了。

Mr. Duda and Ms. Liang say their infatuation for each other makes it work. When the passion fades, the struggle of using translation apps might drive them crazy, Mr. Duda conceded.

杜达与梁红说，对彼此的热恋让这段关系得以维系。杜达也承认，待激情褪去，使用翻译软件的种种不便恐怕会令人抓狂。

Ms. Liang’s eyes were locked on her phone, closely reading the translation of what Mr. Duda was saying. Then she looked up and chimed in.

梁红的双眼紧盯着手机，仔细读着杜达那句被译成中文的话。随即她抬起头，接过话头。

“In fact, this is basically the same as what the Chinese say,” she said, according to my AirPods. “We say that two people are together because they don’t know each other. We want to explore each other’s secrets.”

“其实这跟中国人说的差不多，”我的AirPods里传来了翻译后的声音。“我们说两个人在一起是因为彼此不了解。我们想要探索对方的秘密。”

Once she really gets to know him, she said, she might not be as interested. She watched him following along on the phone, waiting until he finished reading that part to laugh.

她说，一旦真正读懂了他，或许便没那么多好奇了。她看着杜达低头凑近手机，等他读完那句译文才笑出声。