TNW NYC 2016 | Luis von Ahn – Founder & CEO, Duolingo
发布时间 2022-07-06 06:22:27 来源
摘要
Luis von Ahn, the CEO and Founder of Duolingo, explains how learning languages with Duolingo can have a direct economic impact on people's lives.
Video courtesy of 23: www.twentythree.net
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中英文字稿 
So, does every day is at least 10x an 8 minute workout, so you don't need maths to really know that that's true.
因此，每天至少要进行10倍的8分钟锻炼，因此您不需要计算就能知道这是真的。
Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm, warm welcome to Lewis Van Anh.
女士们先生们，请热烈欢迎 Lewis Van Anh 的到来。
Hi, can you hear me? Good. Okay, let's see if this works. Good. Or not. Good.
你好，能听到我说话吗？很好。好的，让我们看看这个能否工作。很好。或者不行。很好。
Okay, so I am from Guatemala. This is a public service announcement that is where Guatemala is. And very importantly, this is not where they keep the prisoners that is called Guantanamo, not the same.
好的，我来自危地马拉。这是一个公共服务公告，它告诉大家危地马拉在哪里。更重要的是，危地马拉不是关押囚犯的地方，那个地方叫关塔那摩，不是一回事。
Now, a few years ago I was in a very fortunate position in my life. I had just sold my second company to Google. And I decided that I want to work on a new project, and I wanted to work on a new project. And I decided that I wanted to work on a project related to education. Education has always been my passion.
几年前，我处于人生非常幸运的位置。我刚刚将我的第二家公司卖给了谷歌。我决定要开始一个新项目，并且希望它和教育有关。教育一直是我热爱的领域。
So I wanted to do something related to education, but my views on education are very related to where I'm from. I'm from Guatemala. And if you don't know anything about Guatemala, it's a very poor country. It's very representative of developing countries throughout the world.
我想做一些与教育相关的事情，但我的教育观点与我的家乡密切相关。我来自危地马拉。如果你不了解危地马拉，那么它是一个非常贫穷的国家。它代表着全球发展中国家的情况。
Now, a lot of people talk about education as something that brings equality to different social classes. But I always saw it as the complete opposite, as something that brings inequality to social classes. Because what happens in especially in developing countries is that people who have a lot of money can buy themselves the best education in the world. They can go study at Harvard, for example. And because they have such good education, they continue having a lot of money. Whereas people who don't have very much money, they barely learn how to read and write. And because of that, they can never make a lot of money.
很多人谈论教育是让不同社会阶层平等起来的东西。但是我总是认为它是完全相反的，它会给社会阶层带来不平等。因为在发展中国家，拥有大量资金的人可以购买世界上最好的教育。例如，他们可以去哈佛学习。由于他们接受了如此出色的教育，他们继续拥有大量的财富。而那些几乎没学会读写的人，由于没有好的教育，他们永远无法赚到大量的金钱。
So education was this thing that created a divide between social classes. And I wanted to do something that would give equal access to education to everybody, regardless of how much money they had.
教育是在社会阶层之间创造出的一道鸿沟，而我想做的是让每个人都能平等获得教育机会，无论他们有多少钱。
Now, education is very general. And I can't think that generally. So I decided to concentrate on one type of education, which happens to be very big throughout the world, except for the United States. It's not very big here. And it is learning a foreign language. So it turns out there's 1.2 billion people in the world learning a foreign language.
现在，教育已经普及了。我无法总体思考这个问题。因此，我决定专注于一种教育类型，这种教育在世界范围内非常流行，除了美国以外。在这里，这种教育不是很普及。这种教育就是学习外语。因此，实际上全球有12亿人在学习外语。
Now, this is a very strange market. 800 million of these satisfy three properties. The first is that they're learning English. The second is that the reason they're learning English is in order to get a job or a better job. And the third is that they are of low socioeconomic conditions. So most people learning a foreign language are basically people trying to learn English in order to get out of poverty.
现在，这是一个非常奇怪的市场。其中有8亿人具备以下三个特点。第一，他们在学习英语。第二，他们学习英语的原因是为了找工作或找到更好的工作。第三，他们处于低社会经济条件下。因此，大多数学习外语的人基本上都是希望学习英语来摆脱贫困的人。
But of course, before Dueling, most of the ways they were to learn a language were very expensive, especially with software. For example, in the United States, there was this thing called Rosetta Stone, which cost between $500 and $1,000. In other countries, there was this thing called Open English, which cost about $1,000. So the irony of it all is most people are trying to learn English to get out of poverty. But it seems you needed about $1,000 in order to get out of poverty. This made no sense.
当然，在Dueling之前，学习语言的方式大多非常昂贵，特别是使用软件。例如，在美国，有一种叫罗塞塔石的东西，价格在500到1000美元之间。在其他国家，有一种叫开放英语的东西，价格约为1000美元。这让人感到讽刺的是，大多数人想学英语是为了摆脱贫穷。但似乎需要大约1000美元才能摆脱贫困。这是没有意义的。
So what I decided to do with my co-founder was to create Duelingo. And we launched it about four years ago. And the idea is that it's a completely 100% free way to learn a language. You can do it on the web or on apps, or basically anywhere electronically. But it is 100% free.
所以我和我的创始人决定创建Duelingo。我们在大约四年前推出了它。这个想法是，它是一种完全免费的学习语言的方式。你可以在网络上或应用程序上进行学习，或者基本上任何电子设备上进行学习。但是它是100％免费的。
Now, since we've launched, Dueling has now become the most popular way to learn languages in the world. It's also the most popular education app in iTunes and also Android. And there's a lot of really cool numbers. I mean, for example, there are more people learning languages on Dueling when the US than there are people learning languages in the whole US public school system. Or here's another one.
自从我们推出Dueling以来，它现在已成为世界上学习语言最受欢迎的方式。它也是iTunes和Android上最受欢迎的教育应用程序。还有很多很酷的数字。我的意思是，例如，在Dueling上学习语言的人数比全美国公立学校系统学习语言的人数还要多。或者还有另一个例子。
We teach a lot of languages. We teach the standard languages you would imagine, like German, French, Italian, Spanish, et cetera. But we also teach some smaller languages like Irish. I actually didn't know Irish was a language. I thought they spoke English there, but it turns out Irish is a language. There's about 94,000 people who are native speakers of Irish. On Dueling, we have over a million people learning Irish. So we can actually multiply the number of people that speak Irish by a factor of 10. There's a funny tidbit about this on St. Patrick's Day, that number doubles every day. And then the next day it goes back to normal. So it's very funny.
我们教授很多门语言。除了德语、法语、意大利语、西班牙语等标准语言，我们还会教授一些较小的语种，例如爱尔兰语。事实上，我之前并不知道爱尔兰语是一门语言。我以为他们那里讲英语，但事实证明，爱尔兰语是一种语言。全球有大约94,000名母语者。在Dueling上，有超过一百万人正在学习爱尔兰语。因此，我们可以把讲爱尔兰语的人数乘以10倍。每年的圣帕特里克节都有一个有趣的趣闻，讲爱尔兰语的人数会每天翻一倍，然后第二天又回到正常水平。这真的很有趣。
Now, what makes me the proudest about Dueling was, there are entire countries where every public school that has access to the internet is using Dueling to teach English to their students. And many of these are developing countries. For example, in Costa Rica and Colombia, this is the case.
现在，让我最引以为豪的是，有些国家的所有能接入互联网的公立学校都使用Dueling教学英语，其中许多国家都是发展中国家。例如，哥斯达黎加和哥伦比亚就是这样的情况。
So on one side of the spectrum, students in public schools in very poor developing countries are using Dueling to learn a language. On the other side of the spectrum, Bill Gates uses Dueling to learn French. So to me, this is what makes me the proudest. The fact that the richest man in the world uses the same system as kids in public schools in developing countries.
在谱系的一端，非常贫困的发展中国家的公立学校学生正在使用Dueling学习一门语言。在另一端，比尔·盖茨正在使用Dueling学习法语。所以对我来说，这是最值得骄傲的地方。世界上最富有的人使用与发展中国家公立学校学生相同的系统学习。
That means that, at least for this particular thing, more money cannot buy you a better educational system, which is exactly what I wanted to do.
这意味着至少就这个问题而言，更多的钱并不能为您带来更好的教育系统，而这正是我想做的。
Now, why do people like Dueling so much? So let me show you some of the things that people say about Dueling. So there's this person, for example, who said in the past couple of days, they learn more from Dueling than in four years of high school. And I think that says more about high school than about Dueling.
现在，人们为什么这么喜欢决斗呢？让我向你展示一些人们对决斗的评价。比如说，最近几天有个人说，他从决斗中学到的东西比在高中学习的四年时间还多。我认为这句话更说明了高中的问题，而不是决斗的问题。
I don't think Dueling goes all that good. Here's another good one. This was my mother. She likes it a lot. Now, one of the reasons that people like Dueling so much is because we've spent a lot of effort.
我不认为决斗会取得很好的效果。这里还有另一种好的方法。这是我的母亲喜欢的方式。现在，人们喜欢决斗的一个原因是因为我们付出了很多努力。
When we were starting Dueling, we realized the hardest thing about learning a language or learning anything by yourself is keeping yourself motivated. So what we've done is we spent a lot of time making Dueling go feel as much as a game as possible.
当我们开始Dueling时，我们意识到自学语言或学习任何东西最难的一点在于如何保持自己的积极性。因此，我们花了很多时间让Dueling尽可能像一个游戏。
It's not exactly a game. We don't call it a game, but it really does feel like a game while you're learning language. We made it as easy as possible as we can. So for example, this is what the home screen for Dueling looks like on iPhones.
它并不完全是一个游戏。我们不把它称作为游戏，但当你在学习语言时，它确实像一个游戏。我们尽可能地使它变得简单易懂。例如，在iPhone上，对决的主屏幕就是这样的。
If you notice, the idea is that the language is split up into multiple units that we call skills. For example, food is a unit. That's where we teach you all kinds of things of food or plurals is a unit. That's where we teach you how to pluralize.
如果你注意到的话，我们的想法是把语言分成多个单元，我们称之为技能。例如，“食物”就是一个单元。在这个单元中，我们教你所有关于食物的东西；“复数形式”也是一个单元，它教你如何用复数形式。
And the idea is that at the very beginning, only one of these skills is unlocked. And you have to complete it to unlock other skills. There's this unlocking mechanism that is very motivating. Now, completing a skill, what it involves, is basically doing a bunch of exercises, a very short exercise, each of which takes about 20 seconds, where the idea is that you get something and you have to do something.
这个想法是在开始阶段只有一个技能会被解锁。你必须完成这个技能才能解锁其他技能。这种解锁机制非常有激励性。完成一个技能其实就是一系列练习，每个练习只需要大约20秒。你需要理解并且做一些事情。
And you can always get it either right or wrong. So at no point on Dueling, or you're reading anything about theory or grammar, anything at all points, you're just doing stuff. So you're learning by doing.
你做的时候，总可以要么做对要么做错。因此，在任何时候，无论是在决斗中还是阅读理论或语法方面的内容，总是要通过实践来学习。
Now, each of these exercises, they have multiple modalities. Some of them, you have to translate between your native language and the language you're learning.
现在，这些练习每一个都具有多种模式。其中某些练习需要你在母语和正在学习的语言之间进行翻译。意思是说，在这些练习中，你需要进行语言翻译练习。
In others, you have to kind of click on the picture that is related to the word. In other exercises, you have to speak to the app and it tells you whether you set it correctly or not. And the idea is there's this progress bar at the top.
在其他练习中，你需要点击与单词相关联的图片。在另一些练习中，你需要跟应用程序说话，它会告诉你是否设置正确。而且在顶部有一个进度条，这是一种想法。
And whenever you get an exercise correct, it goes up, whenever you get an exercise wrong, it goes down. And at the very beginning, that progress bar is empty. And the whole goal of the lesson is to complete this, to fill up that progress bar.
每次你做对了一个练习，进度条就会上升，每次做错了一个练习，进度条就会下降。在开始时，进度条是空的。整个课程的目标就是完成所有练习，让进度条填满。
Now, this is, it looks very simple. But it's actually in the background, it's very sophisticated. For example, the amount that the progress bar goes up and down varies depending on the person and also the exercise.
现在，它看起来非常简单。但实际上，在背后它非常复杂。例如，进度条上升和下降的量取决于人和运动的不同。
So we actually have a pretty good idea of how much each person knows while they've been using Duolingo, because we record everything that they've done. So we know every exercise that you've done on Duolingo and every time you got something wrong, every time you got something right, we even record things like if you've, every time you see the word for elephant, you take, let's say, a second longer to respond, that means that the word for elephant is a little harder for you, so you don't know it that well.
我们其实相当清楚每个人在使用Duolingo期间学了多少知识，因为我们记录了他们所做的每一个练习。我们知道你在Duolingo上做了哪些练习、哪些错了，哪些对了，我们甚至还记录了你在何时看到“大象”这个词时反应时间稍长，这意味着对你来说“大象”这个词有点难，你掌握得不是很好。
So we have a very good model for how much each person knows, and for each exercise, we give you, we have a pretty good idea of whether you're going to get it right or wrong. And if we give you an exercise that we think is too hard for you, we sometimes give you exercises that we think are too hard for you, just kind of to test you and also to motivate you.
我们有一个非常好的模型来衡量每个人的知识程度，对于每个练习，我们有一个相当好的想法，能够知道你会对还是错。如果我们给你一个我们认为太难的练习，有时我们会再给你一些我们认为也很难的练习，只是为了测试你的能力，并激励你。
If we give you something that we think is a little too hard for you, and we think you're going to get it wrong, but you somehow manage to get it right, that progress bar goes up more because you're breaking our expectations. But conversely, if you get it wrong, this is an exercise that we anyways expected you to get wrong, the progress bar's not going to go down very much because we kind of expected you to get it wrong anyways.
如果我们给你一些我们认为对你来说有点太难的东西，而我们认为你会做错，但你却设法做对了，那么进度条会更快地增加，因为你打破了我们的期望。但相反地，如果你做错了，这是我们本来就预计你会做错的练习，进度条不会下降很多，因为我们本来就预计你会做错。
So we do a lot of things like that in the background where we keep a pretty sophisticated model of how much you know. Now, when we started Duolingo, I didn't know anything about how to teach languages. English is not my native language. I learned English.
因此，我们在后台做了许多这样的事情，保持了一个相当复杂的模型，以了解您的知识水平。当我们开始使用Duolingo时，我对如何教授语言一无所知。英语不是我的母语，我是学习英语的。
Then in high school, I unsuccessfully tried to learn French for a year. And so that was my experience of language teaching up until I started Duolingo. It was a computer scientist.
在高中时，我曾经尝试学了一年的法语，但是没有成功。这就是我在开始使用Duolingo之前接触到的语言教学经验。而我的职业是计算机科学家。
My co-founder was also a computer scientist. So we basically two computer scientists who didn't know anything about how to teach languages. So what we did is we started reading books about how to best teach languages. Literally, we read French for dummies. And we read a bunch of books.
我的联合创始人也是一位计算机科学家。所以基本上我们两个都不知道怎么教语言。所以我们开始阅读有关如何最好地教授语言的书籍。真的，我们阅读了入门法语之类的书籍。我们读了很多书。
At some point, we found a book that was called Something Like The Best Method to Teach a Language. And it was a pretty thorough book. It had a whole method for how to teach a language, and it had a lot of scientific evidence proving that it really was the best method to learn a language. At that point, this was not a very popular book. We found it in some university library, and we thought, oh, we struck gold. Because this is really the best method to learn a language.
某个时候，我们找到了一本书，名字叫做《教授语言最佳方法》。这是一本相当详尽的书，它提供了一个完整的教授语言的方法，并且提供了大量的科学证据，证明这确实是学习一门语言最佳的方法。当时这本书并不是很流行，我们在某个大学图书馆找到了它，感到非常幸运。因为这真的是学习一门语言最好的方法。
All we have to do is make an app related to this book. And that's it. That'll be the best app to teach a language. Unfortunately, after we kept on looking, we found other books that also claimed to be the best method to learn a language, which were completely different from the first one. And at that point, we thought, well, these methods to learn a language are a lot like diets, where they all claim are the best diet in the world, but they are completely contradictory to each other. And so we didn't know what to do, and we got confused.
我们只需要制作一个与该书相关的应用程序就可以了。这将是教授语言的最佳应用程序。不幸的是，在我们不断寻找之后，我们发现了其他声称是学习语言的最佳方法的书籍，这些书与第一本书完全不同。在那时，我们认为，这些学习语言的方法很像节食，它们都声称是世界上最好的饮食方式，但它们彼此完全矛盾。因此我们不知道该怎么办，感到困惑。
And we had very simple questions. We wanted to know things like, because we were engineers, we wanted to know things like, should you teach plurals before adjectives or adjectives before plurals? That's a very simple question. And it didn't seem like there was a right answer to this, or at least nobody knew it.
我们的问题非常简单。因为我们是工程师，所以我们想知道一些像这样的事情：应该先教复数还是先教形容词？这是一个非常简单的问题。但似乎并没有正确答案，或者至少没有人知道。
So what we did is we launched what we could, and fortunately, the bilingual started growing quite a bit. And after it grew enough, after we had enough uses, we realized we were in a very unique position. We realized we could actually figure out the answer to many of these questions using our own users, or using our own data.
我们所做的就是推出尽力而为的双语功能，幸运的是，这一功能开始出现了相当大的增长。等它发展到足够的规模，我们便意识到了我们所处的极其独特的位置。我们明白了，凭借我们自己的用户或数据，我们实际上能解答许多这样的问题。
So for example, nowadays, if we want to know whether we should teach plurals before adjectives or adjectives before plurals, we just do an experiment. So for the next 50,000 people that sign up to do a lingo, which takes about six hours to get 50,000 new users, in that time, what we do is, to half of them, at random, we teach them plurals before adjectives. To the other half, we teach them adjectives before plurals. And then we measure which ones learn better.
例如，现在，如果我们想知道应该先教复数还是先教形容词，我们只需要做一个实验。我们会在下一个报名参加语言学习的5万人中随机选择一半，给他们先教复数再教形容词，再给另一半人先教形容词再教复数。然后我们会测试哪一组学得更好。这个过程需要六小时来获取5万个新用户。
And then once and for all, we will know, in our system, it turns out it is better to teach this before that. And we're doing that all the time. At any point in time, we're running about 30 to 50 of these AV tests. And literally, the lingo is getting better every week at teaching languages, because we're experimenting with our users.
我们将最终确定，在我们的系统中，先教这个比先教那个更好。我们一直在这样做。任何时刻，我们都在进行30至50次这样的AV测试。实际上，我们的学术术语每周在教授语言方面变得更加优秀，因为我们在跟我们的用户进行实验。
That didn't sound so good. That's what we're doing. Now, this happens to be, it worked very well. Somebody at the City University of New York did a study to figure out how good lingo is at teaching languages. And what they found is that if you use the lingo for 34 hours, you learn the equivalent of one semester course in that language, which usually takes a lot more than 34 hours if you're actually doing the homework. So it's very successful.
听起来不太好。我们正在做的就是这个。事实是，这个方法非常有效。纽约市立大学的某个人做了一个研究来研究使用lingo教授语言的效果。他们发现，如果你使用lingo学习34个小时，你就能学到一学期的语言课程，而如果你实际上去做作业，通常需要远远超过34个小时。所以这个方法非常成功。
Now, a lot of people ask us about the lingo. If you've ever used the lingo, there's a lot of exercises you get to speak to it. But a lot of people ask us about conversational practice. This is one of the most common requests we get is something like the following.
现在，很多人向我们询问术语。如果你曾经使用过术语，你会学到很多练习来使用它。但是很多人向我们询问口语练习。这是我们收到的最常见的请求之一，大概是这样的。
I would like to be paired up with somebody else who speaks, who teach me the language, maybe with some sort of video or something like that. And there's a version of this that is a very elegant idea that a lot of people have suggested.
我想要与其他会讲该语言的人搭配，帮我学习这门语言，或者用某种视频之类的方式。还有一种非常优雅的想法，很多人都建议过。
I am an English speaker learning Spanish. I would like to be paired up with a Spanish speaker learning English, and then we magically will be able to teach each other the language. And this is a very elegant idea. And this has been suggested a lot. And over the last four years, we've really tried to add this to the lingo. We've had many different attempts at adding this. And every time we try to add it, we realize this really sounds like a good idea, but it turns out it doesn't work.
我是一位学习西班牙语的英语母语者。我希望能与一位学习英语的西班牙语母语者配对，然后我们就可以神奇地互相教授语言了。这是一个非常优雅的想法，也已经被很多人建议过了。在过去的四年中，我们真的尝试过很多次去实现这一想法。每次我们尝试去实现它时，我们意识到这听起来像是一个好主意，但实际上并不可行。
And the biggest problem is that most people don't actually want to do this. The activation energy, the social anxiety that this causes, being paired up with another person to practice a conversation, and it's usually a stranger, to practice a conversation in a language where you're not very good. Most people just don't want to do this. And we've been scratching our heads about what to do with that, because we really want to provide people with conversational practice.
最大的问题在于，大多数人实际上不想这样做。激活能量，社交焦虑，与陌生人配对练习对话，在不熟练的语言中进行对话练习。大多数人只是不想这样做。我们一直在思考该怎么办，因为我们真的想为人们提供交流练习的机会。
And as we're doing this, somebody from the company actually found a study that the US Army did. So there's this funny thing. So the US Army is trying to teach people languages. It turns out the language they really want to teach is Arabic. I don't actually know why that would be, just kidding. But they're trying to teach Arabic. And because it's the US Army and because all the prices are inflated, it costs them something like $50,000 to teach a soldier Arabic. Now, the problem they were having is that for some people, they do spend the $50,000 and they learn Arabic. For other people, they were spending the $50,000 and they weren't learning Arabic at all. And so they were scratching their heads and trying to figure out why is that some people can learn Arabic versus others can't.
当我们做这件事时，公司的某个人实际上发现了美国陆军进行过的一项研究。这是个有趣的事情。因为美国陆军正在试图教授人们语言，结果发现他们真正想教授的语言是阿拉伯语。我不知道为什么会是这样，开玩笑的。但他们试图教授阿拉伯语。因为这是美国陆军，而所有价格都被夸大了，所以他们教授一名士兵阿拉伯语需要花费约5万美元。现在，他们遇到的问题是，对于一些人来说，他们花费了5万美元学习阿拉伯语。而对于其他人来说，他们花费了5万美元却一点也没有学到阿拉伯语。因此，他们苦恼并试图弄清楚为什么有些人能学习阿拉伯语，而其他人却不能。
And what they decided to do is they decided to develop a test to figure out how good somebody is at learning a language. And they were successful at it. They actually developed a test that somebody can take. And afterwards, they'll tell you whether you are actually good at learning a language or not. And this test has a lot of things. I mean, the master's general intelligence, unsurprisingly, you have to be at least a certain amount of intelligence to learn a language. But that's not very high.
他们决定开发一个测试来确定某个人学习语言的能力。他们成功地开发了一种可以进行测试的工具。测试后，他们会告诉你你是否真的擅长学习语言。这个测试有很多方面。我是说，除了一般的综合智力之外，你必须至少有一定的智力才能学会一门语言。但这并不高。
But the biggest predictor about whether you're good at learning a language or not is how much you are OK with sounding stupid. Turns out that if you're OK sounding stupid, you're very good at learning a language. Whereas if you're not, you're not good at learning a language. And it's because the people who are OK sounding stupid have no trouble practicing. At the beginning, if you take somebody who is OK sounding stupid versus somebody who's not OK sounding stupid, the person who's OK sounding stupid will just start talking. Whereas the other shier person like me just won't. And they won't practice. And whereas the other person, at the beginning, both sound equally stupid. But the person who's getting the practice is just getting better and better and better. So one of the biggest problems. And this happens to be 80% of the population.
学习一门语言能力最重要的预测因素是你是否愿意在听起来愚蠢的时候坚持下去。研究发现，如果你不介意听起来愚蠢，那么你学习一门语言的能力非常强，相反，如果你介意听起来愚蠢，那么你不擅长学习一门语言。这是因为那些不介意听起来愚蠢的人无论何时都不会放弃练习。在一开始，如果你找到一个介意听起来愚蠢的人和一个不介意听起来愚蠢的人进行比较，那么后者就会开始说话，而前者不会。尽管这两个人在一开始时听起来同样愚蠢，但那个练习的人会变得越来越好。这是其中最大的问题，而且这种情况在80%的人中都会发生。
People are not very good or people who are not comfortable sounding stupid are not very good at learning a language. But of course, they would still like to learn a language. And so once we realized that, once we realized that it was that pairing people up was not a good thing. And most people didn't want to be paired up because they didn't want to sound stupid. We developed a technology that actually would let you practice conversation.
有些人并不擅长语言学习，或者那些不喜欢让自己听起来愚蠢的人也不善于学习语言。但当然，他们仍然想学一门语言。因此，一旦我们意识到这一点，就意识到把人们配对不是一件好事。大多数人不想被配对，因为他们不想听起来很愚蠢。我们开发了一种技术，让你实际上可以练习对话。
And this is something that we launched about two or three months ago. And it is we launched a way to practice conversation. But when you're paired up, not with another person, but with an artificial intelligence.
大约两三个月前，我们推出了一种练习对话的方式。这种方式是与人工智能配对，而不是与另一个人配对。
So in with Duolingo, we now have a way to teach language with bots. So we're developing chat bots. And the idea is that you'll be able to practice language with this without the social anxiety. And this is one of the things we're working on.
所以现在有了Duolingo，我们有一种可以用机器人教授语言的方法。因此，我们正在开发聊天机器人。这个想法是，您可以练习语言而不会感到社交焦虑。这是我们正在努力的一件事情。
This is an interesting map. I like to show this map. This is, we have uses everywhere in the world. This is the most commonly learned language in every country in the world. So in pink, you see English. So in most countries in the world, English is the most common in the language. In the US, it's Spanish, in Canada, it's French. There's a few interesting things here.
这是一张有趣的地图，我喜欢展示这张地图。这张地图显示了全世界各地都在使用的语言。粉色代表英语，在大多数国家中，英语是最常用的语言。在美国，西班牙语最常用，在加拿大，法语最常用。这里有几个有趣的事情。
But probably the most interesting one is that Swedish happens to be the most learned language in Sweden. It's very strange. And at first, we were pretty confused by this. But then we started looking at it. We realized that those people are actually learning Swedish from Arabic. So those people are actually refugees. So in Sweden, it turns out in Sweden, nobody needs to learn English because they all pretty much know English. So it happens that at least among our users, they're dominated by people who are learning Swedish from Arabic and they're usually refugees.
也许最有趣的是，瑞典最被学习的语言恰好是瑞典语。这很奇怪。一开始，我们感到相当困惑。但是后来我们开始研究，发现这是因为一些人在用阿拉伯语学习瑞典语。这些人实际上是难民。所以在瑞典，英语似乎不是必须学习的语言，因为几乎所有人都懂英语。因此，在我们的用户中，那些学习瑞典语的人主要是来自阿拉伯语背景的难民。
Now, this map is interesting. It shows that learning English is really the key thing about the key language that people are learning on Duolingo. And a couple of years ago, we started getting an email from people learning English who said the following. Thank you so much for teaching me English. But now I have a problem. I need a certificate that shows that I know English. And we started getting hundreds of these emails. And at some point, we decided to look into this. Why is it that so many people are asking for a certificate? And what we found was pretty crazy.
这张地图很有趣，它表明在Duolingo上人们学习的关键语言中，学习英语确实是关键。几年前，我们开始收到一些正在学习英语的人的邮件，内容如下：“非常感谢你们教我英语，但我现在遇到了一个问题。我需要一个证书来证明我会说英语。”我们收到了成百上千封这样的邮件。最后我们决定调查一下，为什么这么多人在要求证书呢？我们发现的结果相当令人惊讶。
If you live in the United States, you probably are completely unaware of this. But it turns out that about $10 billion a year are spent by people trying to prove that they know English. Not trying to learn English. They're just trying to get a certificate that shows that they know English. Now, why would you need such a certificate for many reasons? For example, if you want to apply to come to the university here in the US and you're from a non-English speaking country, you have to take a standardized test that proves that you know English. A test is called the TOEFL. If you want to get a work visa anywhere in the commonwealth, so in the UK and Canada, et cetera. If you want to get a work visa and you're from a non-English speaking country, you have to take a standardized test that proves that you know English.
如果你住在美国，你可能完全不知道这点。但实际上，每年有约100亿美元被花在试图证明他们懂英语的人身上。他们不是在学英语，而是试图获得一份证书来证明他们懂英语。那么，为什么你需要这样的证书呢？例如，如果你想申请来美国的大学，而你来自一个非英语国家，你必须参加一项被称为TOEFL的标准化测试，证明你懂英语。如果你想在英联邦的任何地方获得工作签证，比如在英国和加拿大等地，如果你来自一个非英语国家，你必须参加一项标准化测试，证明你懂英语。
So there's a lot of people taking these tests. It's about $10 billion a year. Now, when we looked at this, I know how these $10 billion has been. What we found was pretty crazy. Most of this money is spent by basically people taking standardized tests. Now, there's a few of them. One of them is called the TOEFL. One of them is called the IELTS. Another one is called the Cambridge English Test. And they're all very similar to each other. They all cost about $250. They all, in order to take them, you have to go to a specific testing center to take them there. So it's like a physical testing center. And because you have to go to a physical testing center, you usually have to make an appointment about four weeks in advance. And then after you take the test, it takes another four weeks to get your results. So basically, it's an eight-week process. You have to go somewhere to take the test and you have to pay about $250. That's how people prove that they know English.
有很多人参加这些考试，大约需要100亿美元。当我们研究这个数字的来源时，发现大部分的开支都是用于标准化考试，例如TOEFL、IELTS和Cambridge英语考试。这些考试相似，每次考试费用约为250美元，需前往指定考试中心进行考试。由于必须前往考试场所，通常需要提前4周预约。考试后还需4周才能获得成绩。总之，整个过程需要8周，需要去某个地方参加考试，花费约250美元来证明自己掌握英语。
Now, this sounds annoying because it actually is. But it's even worse because most of the people that are trying to do this are in developing countries. And there, that's a completely different story. $250, that's a month's salary. The physical testing center, they're not in every city. So if you don't happen to live in a big city, you have to travel to take the test. So this becomes very prohibitive. So what we did about a year and a half ago, or so is we launched our own version of an English certificate called the Dual English Test, where the idea is that you can take a test from an app, as opposed to having to go to a physical testing center. And it only costs $50, as opposed to $250.
这听起来很烦人，因为实际上就是这样。但更糟糕的是，大多数试图这样做的人都在发展中国家。在那里，情况完全不同。250美元，相当于一个月的工资。而且身体检查中心并不在每个城市。所以如果你不碰巧住在一个大城市，你必须去旅行才能参加考试。这变得非常困难。因此，大约一年半前，我们推出了自己的英语证书版本，称为双重英语测试。其想法是您可以从应用程序中进行测试，而不必去身体检查中心。只需花费50美元，而不是250美元。
Now, the reason you have to go to a testing center to take a test is to prove that you're not cheating. So you have to prove that you are you, and not your cousin who actually speaks English. And also that you didn't show up with like Google translate. Now, how do we prevent cheating when you're taking a test from an app? The way we do it is we actually turn on the front facing camera of the phone, and also the microphone to record ambient noise. And then we have a real human watch you take the test so that we can prove that you are you and you're also that you're not cheating.
现在，你为什么需要去考试中心参加考试呢？因为你需要证明你没有作弊。因此，你需要证明你就是你自己，而不是真正会说英语的你堂兄。同时，你也不能用谷歌翻译之类的工具来参加考试。那么，在你通过应用程序参加考试时，我们如何防止作弊呢？我们采用的方法是启动手机的前置摄像头和麦克风来记录周围环境的噪音。然后，我们会请一个真正的人来监督你的考试过程，以便证明你是你自己，而且你没有作弊。
So we've been doing this actually, developing the test was not that hard. But the hardest part is getting adoption. That is, we have to get organizations to recognize this as a standard for English language certification. And we've been doing this. So I'm happy to say that as of this year, a bunch of different US universities are starting to use this test, as opposed to the test they were using, in order to test their students. And some of these are pretty big name universities. So like Yale, UCLA, Northeastern, et cetera, are going to be using this test, which is much better. And that is, I think I've run out of time, but that is basically what I wanted to say. Thank you.
我们已经在开展这个项目了，开发测试并不是很困难。但最困难的是让人们接受这个标准英语认证。我们一直在努力做这件事情。很高兴今年不少美国大学开始采用我们的测试，而不是他们之前使用的测试，以测试他们的学生。这些大学中有一些是相当有名的，比如耶鲁大学、加州大学洛杉矶分校、东北大学等等都将使用这个更好的测试。我想我已经用完时间了，但基本上这就是我想说的。谢谢。
Thank you so much, Lewis. Thank you. So before our next speaker, I have a short announcement. There's three tables in the business area where GitHub is teaching people how to code. So there's still some spots available. If you're interested in that, it's going on right now in the business area to the left, I think.
非常感谢，Lewis。非常感谢。在我们下一个发言者之前，我有一个简短的通知。在商业区有三张桌子，GitHub正在教人如何编程。目前还有一些位置。如果您对此有兴趣，现在正在商业区左侧进行。
So now on to the next speaker. Thank you very much, Lewis. I was great. Our next speaker, she is not only creating momentum for her own company.
那么现在就轮到下一个演讲者了。非常感谢你，Lewis。你的演讲很棒。我们的下一个演讲者不仅在推动自己的公司发展。