PATTON OSWALT, an American comedian, once told a story about a text exchange with his girlfriend. “I love you,” she texted. Mr Oswalt began to reply “I love you too.” Only the grouchy comic got as far as “I…” and the predictive texting program began to fill out the text based on his habits. “…hate…”, it provided. Mr Oswalt hit “send” before he could stop himself, and his poor girlfriend ended up receiving a rather offensive text.
帕顿·奥斯瓦尔特是一名美国喜剧演员，他跟观众讲过自己与女朋友短信交流的故事。“我爱你”，女友在短信中写道。奥斯瓦尔特先生准备回复“我也爱你”。只有爱发牢骚的喜剧演员才懂得“我...”的句式效果，这时文字预测功能开始根据他的习惯自动填写短信，所写的内容是：“...恨...”。奥斯瓦尔特先生还没来得及反应，手一抖就按了“发送”键，结果他女友收到了这条冒犯意味十足的短信。

Johnson would expect Mr Oswalt's relationships to have moved on from such moments of communicative meltdown. Predictive texting was fairly new in 2009, when Mr Oswalt told his gag. But five years later, smarter and faster processors, plus better wireless broadband, have allowed smartphones to do much better at predicting what users mean, and what they are likely to say next. Apple has implemented new elements of language analysis and prediction in iOS8, its latest mobile operating system, for texting both with thumbs and with speech recognition.
笔者约翰逊希望奥斯瓦尔特先生与女友的关系不要因为这种沟通失败而泡汤。2009年，奥斯瓦尔特先生向观众讲这个噱头时，文字预测还是比较新奇的功能。但是五年后的今天出现了更快更智能的处理器和更先进的无线宽带，使智能手机能更好的预测用户的心思以及下一句想要说什么。苹果公司为最新的手机操作系统IOS8提供了新的语言分析和预测元素，适用于手指打字和语音识别。
Speech recognition relies on a big database of natural human English text. An unclear word can be disambiguated by the words around it, as the software tries to match a string of words to a string in its database. If the computer hears "Four score and seven [mumble] ago", it can scan its database and guess that the missing word is probably "years".
语音识别技术依靠普通人类英语文本大型数据库。当软件听到一连串单词时，会从数据库中搜索与之相匹配的语句。所以当软件遇到一个发音模糊的单词时，可根据其前后其他单词来消除歧义。例如，当计算机听到“四十七[发音模糊]前”，它会搜索数据库猜测没听清的那个单词可能是“年”。
In iOS7, the user had to dictate an entire passage, hit “done”, and wait for the (usually quite accurate) text to appear after a second or two. In iOS8, though, things get more interesting: the words appear nearly as they are spoken. The real-time appearance of each word allows the curious language pundit to peer into the software’s mind. I tried a deliberate “Four score and seven rrrrs ago.” Each of the first four words appeared almost instantly. After the rrrrs, the system paused for a brief moment, before offering “years ago” on the screen. The software clearly thought “hmm, rrrrs sounds like nothing in my database. But this ‘four score and seven’ is almost always followed by the word ‘years’, and the ‘ago’ seems to prove it.”
在IOS7系统中，用户必须先口述一整段语音，点击“完成”键，一两秒后语音被转化成文字，准确率一般都很高。在IOS8系统中，该功能变得更为有趣：语音和文字几乎是同步的。由于每个单词可以实时出现，因此语言专家可以分析软件的思维方式。我故意说了“四十七rrrrs前”，前四个单词中的第一个单词几乎立刻出现。当我说到rrrrs时，系统短暂停顿后在屏幕上显示出“年前”。软件明显在想：“嗯...我的数据库中找不到rrrrs的发音，但“四十七”后面经常出现“年”这个单词，而“前”这个单词似乎证明了这一点。
To check my intuition, I tried “rrrrs” for “years” in several situations where "years" is not the obvious word, including a classic line from "Raiders of the Lost Ark": “It’s not the years, honey—it’s the mileage.” The software returned things like “It’s not the errors honey it’s the mileage,” and “It’s not Thursday honey it’s the mileage.” The line obviously isn’t in Apple’s training text as frequently as “Four score and seven years ago.”
为了验证我的直觉判断，我在多个情景中将“年（years）”说成了“rrrrs”，在这些情景中单词“年（years）”并不是显而易见就能推测出来的，包括《夺宝奇兵》中的经典台词：“关键不在于车龄，宝贝，而在于行驶里程”。这时软件显示出的文字是：“关键不在于错误（errors），宝贝，而在于行驶里程”，以及 “关键不在于周四（Thursday），宝贝，而在于行驶里程”。这句话在苹果数据库中出现的频率明显不如 “四十七年前”。
Another much-touted advance in iOS8 is predictive text for typing. When composing a text or e-mail, users see three words above the keyboard at any given time—the three words Apple reckons they are most likely to use next. As with speech recognition, the software must first be trained on a bunch of actual English text. But Apple also claims that the software learns from each individual user over time.
苹果IOS8系统中另一个备受追捧的进步是打字预测功能。当用户在编辑文字或电子邮件时，随时能看到键盘上会浮现出三个单词，苹果认为这三个单词是你接下来最有可能用到的。与语音识别同理，这款软件也必须事先接受真实英语文本的训练。但苹果也表示该软件随着时间也会学习单个用户的使用习惯。
iOS8 has had about a month to learn your columnist’s habits. At present, the three words Apple thinks Johnson is mostly to use to start a text are “I”, “The” and “I’m”. If that sounds depressingly ego-centric, remember that “I” is the most common word in spoken English. Pressing “I” reveals the three words most likely to follow “I”: “love”, “don’t” and “just”. Johnson is apparently not as disagreeable as Mr Oswalt.
IOS8系统用了一个月时间学习笔者的习惯。现在苹果认为笔者在编辑文字时，开头最常用的三个单词是“我”，“这”，“我是”。尽管这种以自我为中心的感觉令人郁闷，但请记住“我”是英文口语中最常用的单词。在键盘上点击“我”会显示接下来最有可能用到的三个单词：“爱”，“不”，“仅仅”。笔者显然不像奥斯瓦尔特先生那般不友好。
What is striking, however, is that though the software can pick words that are likely to follow the previous word, the trick does not produce great phrases. Repeatedly pressing the middle of the three choices on my phone results in
令人惊奇的是，该软件能从先前出现过的预测结果中选词，但这种技巧无法产生令人满意的短语。在我键盘上重复重复点击第二个备选单词，结果产生下面的文本：
“The day I have a great way of the year and the other hand is the only thing that would have to go back and I don’t think that I have a great way of life and the day I have to go back and the other hand…”
我以一年中良好的方式度过了这一天（The day I have a great way of the year），另一方面（the other hand），这一天是我必须要回顾的（have to go back），我认为自己没有良好的生活方式（I have a great way of life），这一天是我必须要回顾的（have to go back），另一方面（the other hand）...
Curiously, sometimes the system repeats its own predictions (“and the other hand” occurs twice). But sometimes it doesn’t (“I have a great way of” is once followed by “the year”, and the second time followed by “of life”). And if I clear the whole mess and begin again, repeatedly tapping the same button gives me a different string. What is going on behind the scenes is unclear. (Apple did not respond to requests to clarify.)
令人惊奇的是，系统有时会重复之前的预测结果（“and the other hand”出现过两次）。但有时又不会重复（第一次出现的“I have a great way of”后面跟随的是“the year”，而第二次出现时后面跟随的是“of life”）。如果我删掉这些乱七八糟的文字重新编辑，然后同样重复点击第二个备选单词，产生的一连串单词会与上次不同。这究竟是怎么一回事我不得而知，苹果公司对于澄清此事的请求未作回应。
When this new predictive feature was announced, a few observers harrumphed: offering the next potential word allows a writer to skip the work of choosing words. Well, to choose just one word: nonsense. At the most, iOS8 will allow you to avoid typing some fairly long but frequent words. But it’s not ready to appease your boss, apologise to your spouse or do your homework for you. In 1965 Michael Frayn imagined automating journalism in his novel The Tin Men, automatically generating catchy headlines and composing predictable stories (like ones on the royal family) with a string of clichés. Fortunately, half a century later, we hacks must still be paid to string out clichés by hand.
当这种新潮的文字预测功能刚问世时，少数观察人士曾对此嗤之以鼻：预测下一个可能用到的单词会让写字的人越过选词过程。只能用一个词来形容：荒唐。IOS8系统最多就是让你不必重复写出冗长又经常使用的单词，但它没想代替你去安抚你的老板，向你的爱人道歉，或者帮你做作业。1965年，迈克尔·弗莱恩曾在他的小说《铁皮人》中畅想过新闻工作自动化的情景：自动产生朗朗上口的新闻标题；编写可预测的故事（比如皇室故事）；一连串的陈词滥调。幸运的是，半个世纪后的今天，我们这些拿工资的雇佣文人仍需亲手编写陈词滥调。