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Home Front: WoT
US military wants a universal translator
2011-02-21
The Pentagon is hoping to improve language translation technology by pumping money into its Boundless Operational Language Translation service.

BOLT is a universal language translation service expected to "enable communication regardless of medium (voice or text), and genre (conversation, chat, or messaging)."

Outlined in DARPA's 2012 budget request, the U.S. government hopes to put around $15 million at minimum into the program.

In contrast, Google is developing similar technology, with its voice/text translation and pronunciation tools that speak words with an appropriate inflection.

Although the technology seems to be somewhat akin to DARPA's vision of BOLT, Darpa claims that GoogleÂ’s version is somewhat amateurish, as the military version is billed as a much more powerful universal translator.
There there. Of course it is .... [Pat pat]
Posted by:gorb

#9  If people would just speak English like everyone else...
Posted by: SteveS   2011-02-21 23:42  

#8  It's all Gilgamesh to me.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2011-02-21 22:25  

#7  Darmak and Jalad, at Tanagra.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2011-02-21 22:04  

#6  Google Translate http://translate.google.com/?hl=en&tab=wT# does a pretty good job of detecting what language you are typing and then translates to English.

Try this at the link: Boa Noite

Should tell you it is Portuguese and then translate it to English. (Means "Good night".)
Posted by: Ebbaiter Poodle4718   2011-02-21 21:50  

#5  LOL Frank! A snark of the day!

There is a way to create an universal translator that would do a decent job (accents and voice are another story) at syntax and grammar. All the languages are based on a binary logic. Aymara is the only one based on trinary logic. If you create logic gates based on Aymara, you get the essential layer by which you can map all the other languages. It has been already done, but the lady that did it was unwilling to depart with the algorithms, for use by mil/intel that become very interested. I guess that military needed another 8 years or so to mimic the functionality.

A note: Despite Aymara being a superior language tool, it does not follow that the speakers have more brain power or become smarter. Point in case--Evo Morales.
Posted by: twobyfour   2011-02-21 19:32  

#4  Speech - text is important, but not the only requirement here. The goal is accurate recognition and translation of meaning, to be delivered in small equipment carried by a soldier.
Posted by: lotp   2011-02-21 19:16  

#3  the real test is can it translate Mendiola?
Posted by: Frank G   2011-02-21 18:26  

#2  Oddly enough, real experts on the subject can, or at least could, be found at Dragon company, now Nuance, which makes the Dragon Naturally Speaking software, voice to text.

For years, the company was neck and neck with IBM in voice to text software, and eventually they produced a superior product, that could adapt to accents with minimal training. Except for one.

For some reason, a Scottish accent was just impenetrable. Just about any other English language accent, and there are a lot of them, they could handle.

But as far as translation goes, accents are the key, both to figure out languages and dialects.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2011-02-21 18:24  

#1  Paging Captain Kirk to the white courtesy phone universal translator.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2011-02-21 17:07  

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