研究人员们表示，一款名为 “埃涅阿斯” 的全新人工智能工具有望加快我们了解整个人类历史的步伐。人工智能此前已经被用于填补古罗马卷轴中缺失的部分，但这个新工具的能力远不止于此。

Historians face many problems in piecing together the past from ancient inscriptions. They're usually incomplete, and also their origin and date may not be known.

历史学家们在用古代铭文拼凑过往时面临许多难题。这些铭文通常残缺不全，而且它们的来源和年代也可能无从知晓。

Researchers attempt to fill in the blanks by drawing on texts that are similar in wording, grammar, and appearance. Ancient inscriptions tend to be formulaic, so historians can infer what the missing part of the sentence is saying from similar inscriptions. The process is painstaking and can take months or years.

研究人员们尝试填补铭文中的空白部分，他们通过借鉴在措辞、语法和外观上类似的文本来完成这项工作。古代铭文往往具有程式化的特征，所以历史学家们可以从相似的铭文中推断出一个句子中缺失的部分所要表达的内容。这个过程是十分艰难的，可能需要数月甚至数年的时间。

Aeneas does this in the blink of an eye, by drawing from a database of 176,000 ancient Roman writings.

而埃涅阿斯仅用一眨眼的功夫就能完成这项工作，它依靠的是从一个包含 17.6 万份古罗马文献的数据库中提取信息。

词汇表

piecing together 把…拼在一起，拼凑
inscriptions 铭文
fill in the blanks 填补空白
drawing on 借鉴，利用
formulaic 程式化的，公式化的
infer 推断
painstaking 费尽心思的
in the blink of an eye 眨眼间，瞬间
drawing from 从…中提取

听力练习

一、听第一遍音频，回答问题。

1. Which is the most important part of this report?
a. Historians struggle to understand incomplete inscriptions.
b. Historians fill in missing parts of inscriptions by hand.
c. Aeneas helps quickly fill in missing parts of inscriptions.

二、用一分钟阅读下列问题，然后听第二遍音频并回答问题。

1. What problem do these historians hope AI will solve?
a. Ancient inscriptions usually have parts missing.
b. Historians don't know who made the inscriptions.
c. Historians don't know what the words mean.

2. Historians use similar inscriptions to guess the missing parts.
a. True
b. False
c. Not given

3. Reconstructing inscriptions without technology takes a few days.
a. True
b. False
c. Not given

4. How many ancient Roman writings are in the Aeneas database?
a. 1,760
b. 17,600
c. 176,000

5. The AI tool 'Aeneas' is used only for ancient Roman inscriptions.
a. True
b. False
c. Not given

三、听第三遍音频，将句子补充完整。（提示：可以反复听，直到听清楚每一个词）

1. They're usually incomplete and also their origin and date ________________ known.

2. Ancient inscriptions ________________ formulaic, so historians can infer what the missing part of the sentence is saying from similar inscriptions.

答案

一、听第一遍音频，回答问题。

1. Which is most important part of this report?

c. All ideas are mentioned in the report, but the fact that an AI tool may fix historian's problems is the most important part.

二、用一分钟阅读下列问题，然后听第二遍音频并回答问题。

1. a. They (inscriptions) are usually incomplete and also their origin and date may not be known.

2. a. True. …historians can infer what the missing part of the sentence is saying from similar inscriptions.

3. b. False. The process is painstaking and can take months or years.

4. c. …drawing from a database of 176,000 ancient Roman writings.

5. c. Not given. We do not know from this report whether Aeneas is used for other things.

三、听第三遍音频，将句子补充完整。（提示：可以反复听，直到听清楚每一个词）

1. They're usually incomplete and also their origin and date may not be known.

2. Ancient inscriptions tend to be formulaic, so historians can infer what the missing part of the sentence is saying from similar inscriptions.