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Communications Technology

Computer Translator Ready for Testing in Iraq 350

Posted by Zonk from the real-life-applications-for-max-headroom dept.
cgibby98 wrote to mention a Wired News story about a battle-zone translation technology that may allow near real-time conversations between English and Arabic speakers. From the article: "Funded by Darpa, the system would allow troops to communicate in Arabic through a laptop computer equipped with voice recognition and translation software. Troops could speak in English and have their words instantly translated into Iraqi Arabic, 'spoken' by a computerized man's voice. The program also translates Arabic into English. Will it replace the need for an interpreter when you're having some sort of high-level conversation? Absolutely not. But it is absolutely to the point where it could be useful in some carefully chosen situations."
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Computer Translator Ready for Testing in Iraq More

Computer Translator Ready for Testing in Iraq

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  • In Sunni-controlled Iraq... (Score:5, Funny)

    by geekpuppySEA ( 724733 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:23PM (#14065191) Journal
    Language butchers YOU!

  • A bit obvious (Score:5, Insightful)

    by haluness ( 219661 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:23PM (#14065194)
    But it is absolutely to the point where it could be useful in some carefully chosen situations.

    Seems like you could say that for any new, generally unproven, technique

  • Oh teh noes (Score:5, Funny)

    by paranode ( 671698 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:26PM (#14065217)
    This have disaster writed all over it!

    • Danger! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dog135 ( 700389 ) <dog135@gmail.com> on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:42PM (#14065392)
      English: We are here to save you!
      Translation: We are here to collect you!

      Seems to work fine to me!

    • Re:Oh teh noes (Score:5, Funny)

      by identity0 ( 77976 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:57PM (#14065537) Journal
      Ah, but will it be able to replicate the great cross-cultural interactions from Hollywood movies?

      Soldier: Ma'am, have you seen any suspicious men in the area?
      Translator: Woman, have you been consorting with men not of your family?

      Iraqi: Fuck you!
      Translator: Me love you long time.

      Soldier: What the fuck?
      Translator: Which way shall we fornicate?

      Iraqi: Agh, you Americans make me so aggravated!
      Translator: Me so horny.

      hilarity ensues. Face it, you know these are going to be programmed by lonely geeks with dirty thoughts on their minds.

  • But... (Score:4, Funny)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:26PM (#14065218) Homepage Journal
    Will it fit in my ear?

  • Bad idea. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:27PM (#14065231)
    Trusting a computer to do real-time translation in a volatile, war-torn region...

    English: "We applaud the creation of your new constitution and are preparing to pull our troops out of the country so that the rebuilding process can begin."
    Arabic: "All your base are belong to us."

    • Re:Bad idea. (Score:4, Funny)

      by vux984 ( 928602 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:51PM (#14065476)
      English: "We applaud the creation of your new constitution and are preparing to pull our troops out of the country so that the rebuilding process can begin."

      Arabic: "All your base are belong to us."

      Wow, this is the most advanced translater built. Unlike most which simply try direct literal translations, this one can actually parse the intent of what Bush actually meant when he said that!

      Bravo!

  • One more invention that gets us closer to Star Trek-tech reality.
    • Yes. Soon we'll have transporters, computers that sound like Majel Barrett, annoying androids, and a really hot sexy Vulcan whose actions seem to resemble that of a very bad actress. This will ultimately lead to the cancellation of our species due to a lack of interest save by people who haven't had a date in ten years.

  • A simple test would be to (Score:4, Funny)

    by it0 ( 567968 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:27PM (#14065235)
    Have that thing read the Koran from arabix to english and then vice versa, then by the number offended devided by all moslims gives you a nice error rate.
  • ...especially to people who grew up watching star trek. Really though it's most important because the technology can eventually eliminate the need for trade languages, which can eventually erode the use of local, cultural language. Since we [predominantly] think in language, people who speak different languages think differently and that is valuable. At the same time, it will probably never eliminate the need for fluent human translators, because sentience appears to be a necessary quality for the best command of language.
    • because sentience appears to be a necessary quality for the best command of language.

      And if slashdot, indeed the entire internet, is any indication--sentience usually isn't enough either.

    • let's clear up some confusion (Score:4, Informative)

      by geekpuppySEA ( 724733 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @03:01PM (#14065566) Journal
      Trade languages don't erode the use of local languages (what's "cultural language"?) - trade languages get used because there isn't a language in common. ("No language was harmed in the making of this commercial transaction")

      On many occasions, it's been shown that if the pidgin language is used consistently around kids, they'll start using it, but just add in all this extra grammatical stuff that they expect to hear but don't - and then the language is said to become "creolized".

      Also: we don't predominantly think in language. We think in something that's more base than, and was prior to, language. Everyone always hears that decades-old, long-ago-disproven Whorfian line, that people (in the same species, with the same neurological makeup) actually think differently according to what language they speak - but no one's buying it anymore except those Psych 101 students who are going to major in elementary education instead of cognitive development.

      I'm a language dork so I feel like I HAVE to comment every time I see language stuff on /. Except for all those "it's"es where it should be "its". Those, I can let you guys have.

    • Speaking as someone who has had some experience (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DG ( 989 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @03:04PM (#14065600) Homepage Journal
      ...I totally agree - once it works.

      I went to school in a military college in Quebec. One of its aims was to make us fluently bilingual (French and English) and a lot of effort was spent on that. All communications outside the classroom switched language every two weeks, we got 5 classes of instruction per week, and we spent two months one summer on a full-bore language training programme.

      And after 4 years of this, I was indeed fluently bilingual. (Je suis billingue)

      BUT - it took 4 years of constant immersion to get there, French and English are reasonably similar (same alphabet, mostly the same sounds, a lot of shared words, reasonably similar grammar) and I still can't do a very good job of translating. In fact, I didn't really start to be able to function in French until I was comfortable enough with it to THINK in French (pense en francias). If I think in French, I'm fine. If I have to think in english and then speak in French (or vice versa) there's a kind of mental clashing of gears; it's like the speech centre and the comprehension centre are in one place, and the translation centre is in another.

      So I can watch a French movie, no problem. But ask me to provide a running translation of the dialogue in English, and I can't do it - not without falling way behind. Translation is HARD.

      Plus, from personal experiance, trying to communicate with somebody when you share very little language is very, very frustrating - for both of you - even in the most benign circmstances. It's a stressor. Now try it when one or both participants in the conversation are in fear for their lives... it's an easy way for tempers and emotions to get stoked way high.

      And that's with French, which was relatively easy. Arabic reads right-to-left, has no shared alphabet with romantic languages, shares few sounds, and has a completely different grammar. I can't imagine how long it would take to be able to speak fluent Farsi or Pashtun - but yet, some day, my life might depend on it.

      If we can develop a working real-time translator, it's going to make a lot of people's lives a lot easier. It will be a de-escalator when it comes to conflict resolution - and by far the best way to resolve conflicts is peacefully. Ask any soldier.

      DG
      • When students go to translator school, they have to do a test. They get a text through headphones in their native language and have to repeat it "live" in a microphone while new text keeps on comming. Very few pass this test. They become interpreters, the others become translators. I speak five languages myself, of which 4 reasonably fluent. I will rarely make mistakes while talking to one person, but put me in a multi-language group where I have to keep on switching every other sentence and in the end
      • What we really need for the troops are not just language tanslators; but cultural translators. Some things are easy to teach (don't address a man's wife, don't reach out with the wrong hand); but others are more difficult.

        Perhaps most difficult is how to defuse a situation after a cultural gaffe has been made.

        Multiply this even more as the issues get larger. The notions we have about self-determination are different from theirs, for instance.

        We need to understand these differences before we can pretend to
        • I'm not sure just how important the cultural gaffes really are. I mean, they should be avoided, and it's good to learn and pick up on local cultural idiosyncracies, but I think most people are willing to give strangers the benefit of the doubt when it comes to things of that nature.

          Don't get me wrong; better to be polite than rude. But I doubt that an obvious foreigner doing something culturally inappropriate is some sort of tripwire that leads to instant violence.

          But misunderstandings in languages definate
      • The civies are going to want this stuff recorded and we won't have slaughter houses anymore.

        Good for the U.N. bad for U.S. morale.

      • You couldn't be more correct here. I speak 4 languages pretty fluently, Persian (my mother language), English (thanks to my parents for forcing me to learn it when I was a child), Turkish (having studied in the Turkish speaking North Cyprus) and French (Oui je parle francais aussi).

        Of these, three are Indo-European languages (French, English and Persian). Grammatically, they all follow the same rules (more or less), and making sentences in them is pretty similar. The place of adjectives, verbs and nouns m

  • Ah, but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by fiannaFailMan ( 702447 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:28PM (#14065244) Journal
    Will it be able to instantly start translating from an alien language that it has never heard before as soon as the other person appears on the main viewer?
  • Please, lie down on the ground in very many pieces

    I'm only doing this to fund my College, so don't make me shoot

    That's not Napalm, that's MK77

    We have an Embedded Reporter, we will be handing out Sweets and having a laugh

    I don't know when your government or mine is going to pull me out of here either.

  • I for one, welcome our Fishspeaker overlords.

  • Just some thoughts. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Amiasian ( 157604 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:33PM (#14065297)
    I've thought of an implementation like this for some time, only I was thinking of the added element of sampling the user's voice with phonemes in the language to be translated to and then averaging that sound sample with the computer so that you could hear it somewhat spoken in the user's voice. Eventually, this would be a simple headset that could be worn, and you'd talk into a microphone and have some speakers around your ears broadcast what you said in translated form. Those speakers could also be a sort of unidirectional microphone for picking up on the foreign language-speaker's voice and translating it back.

    It'd be for one-to-one conversations, of course.
    Unless we get to a point where we can separate individual voices in real time and then translate them and have the computer dynamically assign a digital voice to each of the translations so we don't get a jumbled conversation.
    • have some speakers around your ears broadcast what you said in translated form.

      Well, if I was trying to think of the worst place to put speakers that produced a language I don't understand, "around my ears" would be pretty much the first choice.

  • I tried out the online demo that works through the web browser. I wondered what "I hope the weather is clement when you arive" would translate into. You get:

    "durka durka mohammed jihad durka durka"

    Super!
  • ...I will laugh my ass off.

  • This was already possible (Score:5, Interesting)

    by matt me ( 850665 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:40PM (#14065369)
    I managed something similar a year or so back, in an attempt to create a 'babelfish'. Of course the input/output had to be specified, and it had a very limited range of languages - certainly no universal translator but it did use all free software (as that's all I have).
    0) Input recording of English languagge
    1) Voice recognition software (Sphinx) pipes output to
    2) Script using online translator to convert between language
    3) Festival stumbles out an imhuman gramatically-wrong rendition of the input.

    It wasn't exactly in realtime, I just fed it recordings, for which it would then output an audio file in the other language. The worst step was the voice recognition, which didn't work great even when given the output of the voice syntethisier.

    Sphinx http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/html/cmusphinx.ph p [sourceforge.net]

  • Human translators not very reliable either (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AHumbleOpinion ( 546848 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:44PM (#14065410) Homepage
    But it is absolutely to the point where it could be useful in some carefully chosen situations."

    I think it is far more useful than many people realize given that many people have too much faith in human translators. I was watching a discovery channel episode of "Off to War" and a US officer had his men hold their fire when they saw armed insurgents because they were not sure where the Iraqi police attached to the unit were. Afterwards the US officer tells the translator to tell the police that he had to hold his fire because he did not know where they were and that they must let him know when they leave the group. Subtitles show that the translator really says something like: You idiots! You completely screwed up the mission ... So much for the diplomacy and professionalism the US officer was trying to convey.
    • Afterwards the US officer tells the translator to tell the police that he had to hold his fire because he did not know where they were and that they must let him know when they leave the group. Subtitles show that the translator really says something like: You idiots! You completely screwed up the mission ... So much for the diplomacy and professionalism the US officer was trying to convey.

      Body language plays a clear part in these sorts of situations. The Iraqis aren't stupid- they see the US officer say

      • This is a good point, and I would add that it's important to keep in mind how much language and culture are intertwined. Translating effectively isn't really an exercise in finding the corresponding words in the two languages. Its about finding the most appropriate way to convey the same message in the two languages. I don't really know anything about Iraqi culture, but it is certainly possible that it's not appropriate or effective for a commanding officer to give instructions in a polite, watered down

  • If the administration controlled the voice... (Score:3, Funny)

    by geekpuppySEA ( 724733 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:45PM (#14065421) Journal
    American soldier 1: We didn't plan on leaving the electricity and water off for months, you know.

    Administration-enabled translator: We are so happy that you love America for toppling your eeeeeeevil dictatorship!

    American soldier 2: Hoo yah, we're gonna git us some awl!

    Administration-enabled translator: We are going to train you to defend yourselves before we leave!

    American soldier 3: Dude, I was totally kidding about your sister

    Administration-enabled translator: Why do you HATE FREEDOM?!

    American soldier 4: See, we worship the same thing, really - God, Allah, means the same thing!

    Administration-enabled translator: Praise JESUS!

  • From a crackling loudspeaker on the hummer's roof: "My hovercraft is full of eels!"

  • Yeah, right... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by daniil ( 775990 ) <evilbj8rn@hotmail.com> on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:52PM (#14065479) Journal
    Look, I'm not trying to sound negative here, but unless this conflict draws really really long, I don't really believe these devices will ever hit the streets of Baghdad. All the talk about the possible use of this technology in Iraq serves only to justify all the millions being spent on these machine translation projects.

    • Re:Yeah, right... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by vertinox ( 846076 )
      All the talk about the possible use of this technology in Iraq serves only to justify all the millions being spent on these machine translation projects.

      In light of the bad things it causes, war tends to have given us most of our modern day technological conveniences.

      Left to its own I would suspect the private sector wouldn't be coming up with things like the Manhattan project or even starting the internet as early as they did. (Internet being DARPA's child as a defense of transferring data after a nuclear
  • Let's hope Douglas Adam's words re the universal translator, the Babel fish,that "Caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in history" is not prophetic.
  • I read another story about this technology in a Time magazine article called "5 New Things that will Blow your Mind"

    See: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171, 1 118338-5,00.html [time.com]

    "...your Pocket PC, equipped with IBM's Multilingual Automatic Speech-to-Speech Translator. MASTOR recognizes both Mandarin and English, automatically translating what it hears into the other tongue, so two people who speak different languages can have a conversation."
    • "...MASTOR recognizes both Mandarin and English, automatically translating what it hears into the other tongue, so two people who speak different languages can have a conversation."

      Combine it with an Arabic<->English translator (which I'll call BADR) and you get a rather oddly-named product that has great potential in the UN, the MASTORBADR.

  • Bad substitute for Arabic _training_ for _humans_ (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @02:56PM (#14065521) Homepage
    "No one in the military would make life or death decisions based on a machine translation." That's pure CYA for the first time this device gets someone killed. If a life or death decision needs to be made and the only thing you have at hand is a machine translation, what are you going to use?

    I don't know how representative of the state of the art they are, but I've been massively underwhelmed at Babelfish's ability to understand foreign-language text and by ViaVoice's ability to understand speech. I can't imagine the effect of layering machine translation errors on top of machine voice interpretation errors.

    According to href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200512/iraq-a rmy">James T. Fallows, "The U.S. military does everything in Iraq worse and slower than it could if it solved its language problems. It is unbelievable that American fighting ranks have so little help. Soon after Pearl Harbor the U.S. military launched major Japanese-language training institutes at universities and was screening draftees to find the most promising students. America has made no comparable effort to teach Arabic. Nearly three years after the invasion of Iraq the typical company of 150 or so U.S. soldiers gets by with one or two Arabic-speakers. T. X. Hammes says that U.S. forces and trainers in Iraq should have about 22,000 interpreters, but they have nowhere near that many. "

    Instead of doing the obvious thing--give soldiers training in Arabic and offer big bonuses for Arabic-speaking recruits--the U.S. does nothing for a couple of years and then tries to throw a cheap technical fix at the problem.

    If we must throw gadgets at the problem, why not a satellite phone linked to a big building full of human Arabic/English simultaneous translators?
    • James T. Fallows [theatlantic.com]

      This time I DID press "preview..."

    • Re:Bad substitute for Arabic _training_ for _human (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @03:42PM (#14065947) Homepage
      Instead of doing the obvious thing--give soldiers training in Arabic and offer big bonuses for Arabic-speaking recruits--the U.S. does nothing for a couple of years and then tries to throw a cheap technical fix at the problem.

      Bullshit. You clearly know absolutely nothing about the subject and are pulling crap out of your ass. They already do offer bonuses to qualified recruits based on their ability to speak foreign languages. And do you really think they're not cranking out arabic linguists as fast as they can? It takes 9 months to a year to train a non-arabic speaker to speak well enough to just barely get by. It then usually takes an additional year of real-life exposure before they truly become proficient. Furthermore, the language program only takes those who score in the top 5% on their aptitude tests, and of those they do accept, fully half still wash out. You may think it's just a matter of teaching all the infantry grunts a half dozen canned phrases, but making a usable translator out of someone is a hell of a lot harder than teaching them to shoot a machine gun. This all I know, being a former soldier with the 101st Airborne (311th MI bn, "Eyes of the Eagle") and a graduate myself of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California.

      • I can speak to how hard this is. The Arabic course is actually 63 weeks, with an additional 4 more months at Goodfellow AFB, TX. I was a former Russian linguist. I say former linguist because I washed out of the course with 2/3 of the class (yes only a 1/3 ended up graduating). Learning a language isn't hard, but the pace they are trying to teach it to you at is. It's OK though, I got reclassied into a much cooler job and I'm much happier with it.
    • James T. Fallows, "The U.S. military does everything in Iraq worse and slower than it could if it solved its language problems. It is unbelievable that American fighting ranks have so little help. Soon after Pearl Harbor the U.S. military launched major Japanese-language training institutes at universities and was screening draftees to find the most promising students. America has made no comparable effort to teach Arabic. Nearly three years after the invasion of Iraq the typical company of 150 or so U.S. s
  • ...in 3... 2... 1...

    (Come one, you know you want to!)
  • There were some problems with the early prototypes. Some examples:

    "How many miles to Babylon?" was translated into Arabic as "My hovercraft is full of eels."

    And in Arabic "America go home!" was translated into English "My nipples explode with delight."

    See the full transcript [thisisawar.com] for the full details.
  • It takes slashdot a while to catch up, but troops were using similar devices since the initial invasion. I recall it was called the phrasolator.
  • My sources tell me that this has been in heavy use by the CIA for some time, at secret installations in Eastern Europe. I guess, it took time to ramp up for Iraq as there was an expected increase in vocabulary. Apparently for the CIA the device merely had to handle screaming and whimpering of the word 'No' for the various languages in use.
  • The important thing is that these translators aren't gay. That's what really matters in America and the US military, isn't it?

    (As I've said before, I'd rather be covered by a gay guy who thought I was hot than by a homophobe who thought I was gay.)
  • that they would prefer for us to go away.

  • As Monty Python would say... (Score:3, Funny)

    by snuf23 ( 182335 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @04:19PM (#14066282)
    "My hovercraft is full of eels"

  • Which Arabic are we talking about? (Score:3, Informative)

    by BibelBiber ( 557179 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @04:30PM (#14066410)
    Hey, did anybody consider that there is not the Arabic out there? When we're talking about the Arabic, it's basically a synthetic language, set up by islamic scholars sometime between the 7th and 10th century. There was so much trouble reading the Qur'an, they needed to write a prescriptive grammar and dictionary which cannot be backed up by older texts other than the Qur'an itself. This is a major problem with rabic.
    Aside from that, Arabic differs so much from one country to another, you can't just set up something to translate it. It's like saying English and German are Germanic languages, so let's make a translator from Germanic (ie Eglsih or German or Danish or dutch) to Chinese. It won't work (I'm talking about the present). Vowel qualities differ so much, there's no chance to match two regions. Heere again the problem lies with the Arabic, it's a sacred language and nobody would say he or she is talking something like Iraqi or Moroccan, they all speak Arabic. If you lose your language, you lost part of your identity.
    Okay, this looks somehow Orientalist but nevertheless, there is a problem with speaking about plain Arabic, it's a bit more complicated.

  • Darpa? (Score:3, Funny)

    by AyeRoxor! ( 471669 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @04:47PM (#14066596) Journal
    Funded by Darpa[...]

    I could have sworn it was funded by Durka Durka...

  • Soldier's perspective (Score:4, Informative)

    by mansa ( 94579 ) on Friday November 18, 2005 @05:36PM (#14067096)
    I'm stationed in central Iraq, and think this software would be great as a backup tool. I've never used this hardware, so I can't comment on how well it really works.

    At the moment, I'd stick with my Iraqi 'terps for day to day operations. I have 9 working for me now, I trust all of them. Typically they're screened by a US Company, and are pretty smart guys who love their country.

    Where they prove to be extra valuable is when they use their "Arab-sense". They can tell where people are from by the way they talk, or look. They know the difference between Iraqi and Syrian Arabic... and even between cities in Iraq. They're great at defusing situations, and act as my eyes and ears when working with locals/Iraqi soldiers. They are also able communicate my intent without directly translating my words. Sometimes a direct translation isn't the best way to go, as it can be confusing. If needed, they can further clarify what I'm trying to convey. That's why I like to call them my 'terps, instead of translators. Strict translation may be OK in certain situations, but when you're in a hot situation having someone interpret can be necessary.

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