Schools Turn to AI Translation Tools to Support English Learners

学校采用人工智能翻译工具助力英语学习者

A first grade child, whose parents moved from El Salvador to New York City earlier this year, leans over to chat with his classmate about a word problem. Several states south, a father, fresh off a move from Mexico, walks into a school in Washington County, Virginia, to register his daughter for classes.

一名今年年初随父母从萨尔瓦多移居纽约市的一年级学生，正俯身和他的同学讨论一道应用题。而在南部几个州以外，一位刚从墨西哥移居而来的父亲，走进弗吉尼亚州华盛顿县的一所学校，为他的女儿办理课程注册手续。

These seem like ordinary occurrences in the K-12 world. The difference: The New York-based first grader is speaking into a new-age walkie-talkie, which then spits out English to her classmate. Similarly, the Virginia-based father wears eyeglasses that listen to his Spanish and translate the sentence through an app to the English-speaking school secretary.

这些在K-12教育领域里，似乎都是司空见惯的事情。不同之处在于：这名就读于纽约的一年级学生正对着一台新时代对讲机说话，随后对讲机将她说的话转换成英语，传递给她的同学。同样地，这位弗吉尼亚州的父亲戴着一副智能眼镜，眼镜可以收听他的西班牙语，并通过一款应用程序将句子内容翻译成英语，转递给学校里讲英语的秘书。

Schools are embracing artificial intelligence to help with language translation. While teachers previously had to make do by using Google Translate — or in even earlier days, flagging the nearby foreign language teacher for assistance — institutions are discovering that new technology helps integrate the growing number of English-learner students — who now number more than 5 million across the country — and their families. While institutions are not advocating for the replacement of dedicated services that help children acquire English skills for the long term, AI — much like in other capacities within a school — is being used to facilitate communication in the short term.

学校正借助人工智能技术，以辅助开展语言翻译工作。此前，教师们只能勉强借助谷歌翻译来应对教学需求——甚至在更早的时候，还需求助于学校里的其他外语教师——而如今，教育机构逐渐发现，新技术能够有效地将数量日益增长的英语学习者群体及其家庭融合在一起——目前全国此类学生的人数已超过500万。虽然教育机构并不主张用人工智能取代那些能够帮助儿童长期掌握英语技能的专门服务，但人工智能——就像学校内的其他功能一样——正被用于促进短期的沟通交流。

“Last year I had students not participating, they didn't have a lot of confidence,” Madison Weidner, a first grade teacher at a Title 1 school in New York City, says. “Can you imagine sitting in a classroom and they're speaking a completely different language? I’ve noticed a huge difference with using [AI-enabled] tools. They’re not only participating in conversations with their peers but now they’re able to hear the gist of a lesson as well.”

纽约市一所一级学校的一年级老师麦迪逊·魏德纳(Madison Weidner)表示：“去年我的学生不爱参加课堂活动，他们缺乏自信心，”。“你能想象到，他们坐在同一个教室里，但却说着完全不同的语言吗？我发现自从使用了[人工智能工具]之后，这种情况有了显著的变化。他们不仅参与到与同伴的对话，现在也能够听懂课程的要点了。”

Despite teaching in a traditional classroom, roughly one-third of Weidner’s 22 students receive ELL — or English language learner — services, with some of her students speaking no English at all.

尽管在传统课堂授课，但魏德纳所带的22名学生中大约有三分之一都在接受ELL（英语语言学习者）服务，其中部分学生完全不会说英语。

“It seems crazy but we do find a way to communicate through hand gestures,” she says, although with ELL services, children get pulled for additional help as well. “Once you get to know the child, they find a way to communicate despite the language barrier. You may just miss a lot of key details.”

“这听起来可能有点疯狂，但我们确实能够通过手势进行交流，”她说，尽管接受着英语学习者(ELL)服务，孩子们也会被学校安排去参加额外的课程。“一旦你了解了孩子，就会发现，尽管存在着语言障碍，孩子们依旧能够找到沟通的方法。你很可能会错过很多关键的细节。”

When she arrived at P.S. 142 Amalia Castro last fall, she was introduced to four small devices in her classroom called Pocketalk, purchased by the school, which allow a student to press a button and speak into the device, which translates to the other student.

去年秋天，当她来到阿玛莉亚・卡斯特罗第 142 公立学校时，校方为她介绍了教室里的四台小型设备——这些由学校采购的Pocketalk设备，学生只需按下按钮并对着设备说话，设备就会将说话内容自动翻译给另一名学生听。

She also uses Pear Deck, which provides translation tools for students to use during online-based lessons. For example, one of Weidner’s students spoke very good English but had trouble with math story problems. When using the “translate” tool, she began to drastically improve.

她还使用了名为”梨课“（Pear Deck）的教学平台，其中有翻译工具可供学生在在线课程中使用。例如，魏德纳的一名学生英语说得很好，但在做数学应用题时遇到困难。在使用了这个平台的“翻译”工具之后，她的成绩有了显著提升。

“She went from, ‘I don’t think I can’ to straight up proficiency,” Weidner says. “She got the math part and could break down the word problem, it was just the language barrier.”

“她从‘我认为我做不到’的状态转变到完全熟练的程度，”魏德纳说。“她掌握了数学部分，并且能够破解应用题，说明问题根源只是语言障碍。”

Becky Huang, professor of multilingual language education at Ohio State University, says using AI-enabled devices can be a more common way to bridge the language gap, especially for students who need extra support and who are new to a school.

俄亥俄州立大学多语言教育教授贝基·黄表示，使用人工智能设备能够有效弥合语言差距，这是一种更为常见的方式，尤其适用于需要那些额外帮扶和刚入学的新生群体。

“You want students to be able to leverage their native language,” she says. “Otherwise it’s sink or swim, which is not a good approach.”

“你希望学生能够利用母语进行学习，”她说道。“否则学生要么沉没要么游动起来，这种做法并不好。”

But both linguistics experts and educators who are experimenting with adopting the technology itself acknowledge the pitfalls that often go hand-in-hand with AI adoption, including continued concerns about data privacy, bias, and an over-reliance.

但无论是语言学专家，还是正在尝试采用该技术的教育工作者，都承认人工智能应用往往伴随着隐患，其中包括人们对数据隐私、偏见和过度依赖等隐患的持续担忧。

Concerns to Consider

需要考虑的注意事项

Keith Perrigan, the superintendent at Virginia-based Washington County School District, offers four headsets called Duoecho Smart Glasses. It has a speaker on its ear piece that is connected to an app. When the speaker, typically Spanish-speaking in Washington County, says a statement, the app translates it to English, speaking the translation out loud for the other party to hear.

弗吉尼亚州华盛顿县学区的负责人基思·佩里根推出了四款名为Duoecho智能眼镜的耳机。这类耳机内置的扬声器可以连接到应用程序。当发言人（通常为在华盛顿县说西班牙语的发言人）发言时，该应用程序会将其翻译成英语，并大声播报译文以便让另一方听到。

He says while the district has several AI-enabled headsets to help with translation among parents — most often used when enrolling their child in the district — the English learner students within the district use them only when absolutely necessary.

他说，虽然该学区配备了多款支持人工智能的翻译耳机，用于协助家长之间的沟通翻译——最常用于家长们为孩子办理学区入学手续时——但学区内的英语学习者群体仅在绝对必要时才会使用这类设备。

“It’s more of a crutch in the classroom,” he says, adding the students get inclusive services to help them become proficient in English. Roughly 130 out of 6,700 students in Perrigan’s district are English learners, with 13 native tongues represented among them. “Our number one goal is getting them fluent in reading, writing and understanding English as quickly as possible.”

“这更像是课堂上的辅助工具，”他说道，并补充说学生们会获得包容性服务，以帮助他们熟练掌握英语。佩里甘学区有6700名学生，其中大约有130名是英语学习者，而这其中就有13种不同的母语。“我们的首要目标是让他们尽快掌握英语的流利阅读、写作和理解这些方面。”

Victor Lee, who leads the Stanford Accelerator for Learning’s AI+Education, agrees on the importance of using AI tools as a bridge, not a replacement for English learning services.

斯坦福学习加速器AI+教育项目的负责人维克多·李（Victor Lee）对此表示认同，他认为把人工智能工具作为英语学习的辅助桥梁很重要，而不只是替代品。

“On the one hand, it’s encouraging because it has the potential to increase participation and learning opportunities when differences in language are creating difficulty for them,” he says. “On the other side of it, I would hope as this technology gets used, it’s done so with caution and awareness of major limitations that exist, even with state-of-the-art devices. It’s considered one type of support for working across languages but there are many others that absolutely should be part of teachers' repertoire.”

“一方面，这确实令人鼓舞，因为当语言差异给他们带来困难时，这项技术能够有效提升参与度和增加学习机会，”他说道。“另一方面，我希望随着这项技术的普及使用，大家能够谨慎行事，并充分意识到即使是最先进的设备，也存在着诸多显著限制性。虽然它被认为是跨语言工作的一种辅助工具，但在教师技能库里，还应当包含更多其他类型的辅助手段。

Weidner is also quick to acknowledge the AI systems are far from perfect.

魏德纳也很快承认，这些人工智能系统远非完美。

“I’ll notice when a student is telling me something, whatever it translates back doesn’t make sense; you can tell when you're saying something the child looks back at you, like, ‘Wait, what?’’’ she says. “And same with what they say back to me. As an adult I can use context clues, but it does happen a lot more often than I’d like it. I wish there was something that was 100 percent accurate, but there isn't that just yet.”

“我会注意到，当学生跟我说话时，它翻译回来的内容往往没有意义；你会发现，当你说话时，孩子会回头看着你，好像在说‘等等，什么？’”她说道。“他们对我说的话也会出现一样的问题。作为一个成年人，我还能借助上下文线索进行理解，但这种情况发生的频率确实比我想象的要频繁得多。我希望有100%准确的翻译，但目前还没有。”

Generative AI has trouble properly processing children’s voices, due to insufficient training data.

由于训练数据不足，生成式人工智能很难对儿童的声音进行准确的处理。

“AI is trained on large language models, so if they don't have enough Mandarin-speaking children, they would mark everything wrong,” Huang says. “And there could be biases in language usage: Even in English, we have different varieties like British English. I think users, either students or teachers, have to think about what this particular AI is trained on.”

“人工智能是基于大型语言模型开展训练的，因此如果模型中缺乏足够多的普通话使用者，系统就会把所有东西都标记为错误，”黄说道。“而且语言使用可能存在偏见：即使是英语，也会有像英式英语这样的不同变体。我认为，无论是学生还是老师，都必须清楚这个特定人工智能的训练数据来源。”

Weidner added if a child is more soft-spoken — which is typical with her English learner students who may be more shy to speak up — the Pocketalk system also has trouble translating.

魏德纳补充说，如果一个孩子说话声音比较轻——这类是她所带的英语学习者学生的典型特征，他们可能会更害羞而不愿说话——那么Pocketalk系统在翻译时也会遇到困难。

Lawrence Paska, executive director of ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages), says translation apps, while useful in some cases, do not include important cultural context and nuance.

ACTFL（美国外语教学委员会）执行主任劳伦斯·帕斯卡表示，翻译应用程序虽然在某些场景下确实有用，但不包括重要的文化背景和微妙之处。

“We’re still working on reliability and validity; the big issue with any computer-based tool is context,” Paska says. “You can hold Google Translate up to a sign and it can translate it, but do I understand the context, the dialect?”

“我们仍在完善工具的可靠性和有效性；任何计算机辅助工具的核心问题都在于语境，”帕斯卡说道。“你可以将谷歌翻译举到一个招牌前，它就可以翻译出来，但我能理解其中的语境和方言含义吗？”

The ACTFL does not have specific guidelines on using AI for language learning. Paska says since the tech is “constantly changing,” the organization prefers to offer ongoing training, including webinars throughout the year and a focus group where members can share best practices.

ACTFL（美国外语教学委员会）尚未出台关于使用人工智能进行语言学习的具体方针。帕斯卡表示，鉴于这项技术“不断变化”，该委员会更倾向于提供持续性的培训，包括全年的网络研讨会，以及可供成员分享最佳实践的焦点小组。

The National Education Association outlines several unintended consequences that could come from multilingual learners using AI, including Paska’s mentioned loss of cultural context, missed opportunity for learner-educator interactions and impeded peer interaction.

美国国家教育协会指出，多语言学习者使用人工智能可能会带来一些预想不到的后果，其中包括帕斯卡提到的文化语境缺失问题，学习者与教育者互动机会的减少以及同伴间互动交流受阻。

Educators are often left to their literal own devices when it comes to AI and implementation, leading those with a propensity for education technology to step up. Weidner, for example, has her master’s degree in learning technology and experience design, and, along with her other first grade teachers, tasked herself with learning the AI technology tools.

在人工智能技术应用方面，教育工作者往往只能单打独斗，这促使那些有精通教育技术倾向的专家挺身而出。以魏德纳为例，她拥有学习技术和体验设计专业的硕士学位，于是和其他一年级老师一起，承担起了学习人工智能技术工具的任务。

Weidner added she is careful with her students relying too much on the translation devices, should they be placed in a second grade classroom the following year with a teacher that is less technologically inclined.

魏德纳补充说，她会谨慎对待学生过度依赖翻译设备的情况，因为这些学生到了第二年将进入二年级的课堂，所遇到的老师可能不太擅长使用这项技术。

“If they go to second grade and their teachers don't use it, then they're back to square one,” she says. “There is part of accountability to release the scaffolding, to make sure they’re increasing their English vocabulary.”

“如果他们上了二年级，而老师不使用这类教学工具的话，那么他们就又回到了起点，”她说道。“老师有部分责任要撤除此类辅助工具，以确保学生们能够扩充英语词汇量。”