The Henn Na Hotel in Japan, which from 2015 has employed almost 250 robots to meet guests' needs, is cutting back on automation after its experiment failed to reduce costs or workload for employees. 

位于日本的海茵娜酒店为了满足宾客的需求，从2015年开始引进了大约250个机器人，但却没能减轻雇佣成本或员工负担，因此该酒店正在大幅减少机器人的数量，让它们“下岗”。

The hotel will reduce its robotic workforce by more than half and return to more traditional human-provided services for guests, though it will maintain a number of robots in areas where it found them to be effective and efficient. Its change of direction can offer lessons for companies that are pursuing robotic solutions for customer service roles.

酒店内有过半的机器人将面临“被炒鱿鱼”的命运，取而代之的是更为传统的人工服务，但是工作效果比较好的一些机器人则会被保留在原有的岗位上。很多企业想要通过机器人来解决客户服务方面的问题，而酒店将机器人“炒鱿鱼”这一案例则给它们上了一课。

The hotel utilized a host of robots including in-room voice assistants and a robotic concierge. It also put robots to work behind the scenes to complete tasks such as sorting and transporting luggage. While robots moving luggage into and out of storage containers or around the hotel has proven to be useful, most of the other deployments have not, for a variety of reasons.

在这家酒店内机器人无处不在：客房内有语音助手机器人，房外有机器人门房，还有机器人专门负责行李的挑拣和运送。尽管行李机器人在实际运用中的效果还算不错，但其它的机器人则是状况百出。

Foremost among these is the growing obsolescence of some of these robots, with units like the in-room assistants leaving customers frustrated with their experience. In other instances, robots didn't actually eliminate the need for workers, such as at the check-in desk, where robots designed to look like dinosaurs greeted guests but still needed humans to make copies of passports, for example.

各类问题中最突出的要数部分机器人的陈旧过时，它们渐渐跟不上时代的步伐，例如房内机器人助手经常解决不了顾客的问题。有些机器人则没法减轻工作人员的负担：如被设计成“恐龙”样式的前台机器人虽然能向顾客问好，但是复印护照这种细活，仍然需要人工来完成。

Most consumers are still uncomfortable with robots when they need to communicate with the machines face to face. Instead, robots should be developed for tasks where they work alongside trained employees and are likely to have the most meaningful impact — after all they are not good enough to replace all human work at present.

当和机器人面对面交流时，大多数的顾客仍然感到不自然。实际上，要想在服务业领域让机器人大派用场，最好的办法是让它们协助训练有素的我们进行工作，这样才能使整体的工作效率最大化——毕竟当前的机器人还无法完全替代人类来工作。

VOCABULARY

concierge: n. 看门人，门房

deployment: n. 部署；调度