NIST Puts Smart Phone Translation Technology to the Test

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is helping the Defense Department evaluate the in-the-field performance of two-way, real-time voice translation systems for use in Afghanistan.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• NIST
• DARPA
• Defense Department
• translator
• translation device
• voice translation system
• Pashto
• smart phone
• Afghanistan
• Star Trek
• universal translator
• evaluation
• performance testing
• cell
• phone
• innovation

[balboarock]

Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy predicted this with the Babel-Fish! It's fascinating to see this technology being put to good use; this is an absolute necessity for the protection of the troops and civilians alike. I wonder: is this technology capable of interpreting variations in local dialects and offering 'sets' of possible interpretations to either/both end-users in situations where a translation is ambiguous, thereby replicating the more precise skills one would expect from a human?

[usnistgov]

From Craig Schlenoff, Project Leader, NIST TRANSTAC Evaluation Team

For this effort, we have focused on one dialect of Pashto, namely Kandahari. However, when the same systems were put in front of people who speak other dialects, they still worked, though not as well. The systems are only as good as what they are trained on … if you train them on other dialects, they should work equally well on them.

[powerpashtoons]

wow Great.I lOVE Pashto.It is Great language.In Pashto say:Ta Sanga Ye ?it means how are you? Za Kha Yam Its means I am Fine :):):

[samh09]

That is really cool.

[applekidtw]

I want a klingon version...

[kalucardable]

@dagreatone2009 I heard that Talibans put a higher price on capturing interpretors than US soldiers. Are you training for this dialect?

[dagreatone2009]

Wow this is really interesting, do you guys see this eventually being a replacement for interpretors outside of military operations (i.e. U.N., international business etc.) cause I'm training to become an interpretor! Lol don't want to lose my job to a Nexus One!! haha

[captainFLUORESCENT]

curiously enough that StarTrek translator device seems more like StarWars lightsaber(TM)...

[usnistgov]

From Craig Schlenoff, Project Leader, NIST TRANSTAC Evaluation Team

The time the systems takes to translate a sentence does vary with the length of the sentence. A few words sentence may only take a second or two while a longer sentences (10 words) may take 4-5 seconds.

[AndrewFaulds]

@usnistgov I see. Does the time taken to translate a sentence increase depending on its length? For instance, how long would the previous sentence take to translate (roughly)?

[usnistgov]

From Craig Schlenoff, Project Leader, NIST TRANSTAC Evaluation Team

The systems tend to work better on shorter, simpler sentences, but can still be used for more complex sentences. From initial analysis, utterances that are less than 15 words seem to work best with roughly linear degradation after that as a function of the number of words.