50.Which of the following can best sum up the passage?

A.It is necessary to learn the language before you go to the country.

B.Americans are used to the culture of other countries.

C.One needs many characteristics to live in another country.

D.To live in a foreign land one should get fully prepared.

C

In a few years, you might be able to speak Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, and English-and all at the same time. This sounds incredible, but Alex Waibel, a computer science professor at US's Carnegie Mellon University(CMU)and Germany's University of Karlsruhe, announced last week that it may soon be reality. He and his team have invented software and hardware that could make it far easier for people who speak different languages to understand each other.

One application, called Lecture Translation, can easily translate a speech from one language into another. Current translation technologies typically limit speakers to certain topics or a limited vocabulary. Users also have to be trained how to use the programme.

Another prototype(雏形机)can send translations of a speech to different listeners depending on what language they speak. “It is like having a simultaneous translator right next to you but without disturbing the person next to you,” Waibel said.

Prefer to read? So-called Translation Glasses transcribe(转录)the translations on a tiny liquid-crystal(液晶)display(LCD)screen.

Then there's the Muscle Translator. Electrodes capture the electrical signals from facial muscle movements made naturally when a person is mouthing words. The signals are then translate d into speech. The electrodes could be replaced with wireless chips implanted in a person's face, according to researchers.

During a demonstration held last Thursday in CMU's Pittsburgh campus, a Chinese student named Sang Jun had 11 tiny electrodes attached to the muscles of his cheeks, neck and throat. Then he mouthed-without speaking aloud-a few words in Mandarin(普通话)to the audience. A few seconds later, the phrase was displayed on a computer screen and spoken out by the computer in English and Spanish: “Let me introduce our new prototype.”

This particular gadget(器械),when fully developed, might allow anyone to speak in any number of languages or, as Waibel put it, “to switch your mouth to a foreign language”. “The idea behind the university's prototypes is to create ‘good enough’ bridges for cross-cultural exchanges that are becoming more common in the world,” Waibel said.

With spontaneous(自发的)translators, foreign drivers in Germany could listen to traffic warnings on the radio, tourists in China could read all the signs and talk with local people, and leaders of different countries could have secret talks without any interpreters there. 

45. The author implies________.

A. parents can never hope to teach their children new sounds

B. even after they have learnt to speak, children still enjoy imitating

C. children no longer imitate people after they begin to speak

D. children who are good at imitating learn new words more quickly

B

Scholars and researchers have tried to discover what personality(个性)characteristics(特征)go along with success in intercultural experiences. Their findings have often been unclear or incomplete. But three characteristics stand out in their reports: patience, a sense of humor, and the awareness of being unclear.

Patience, of course, is the ability to keep calm even when things do not go as one wants them to, or hopes they will, or has even been sure they will. Impatience sometimes brings improvements in relations with other people, but usually it does not.

A person with a sense of humor is less likely to take things too seriously and more ready to see the humor in her own reactions than is a humorless person. The value of a sense of humor really needs to be paid more attention to.

“The awareness of being unclear” is a more difficult concept than patience or a sense of humor. Foreigners often find themselves in situations that are unclear to the newcomers. That is, they do not know what is happening in the situation. Perhaps they do not understand the local language well enough, or they do not know how some system or organization works, or they can’t be sure of different people’s roles in what is going on. “It’s like I just got here from the moon,” a Chinese graduate student who newly arrived in the United States said, “things are just so different here.”

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