4/29/2003: Translating device for military

From here: what you're seeing there is a "phraselator" in use. This little device allows troops in Iraq and/or Afghanistan to use the phraselator to actually speak given phrases in the host language.

It looks like the soldier here is selecting from the menu-based phrase database, but the phraselator will also let the user speak directly into the unit with up to 3500 phrases.

Of course, there's no reverse phraselator for translation in the other direction, so it's probably hard to know whether the people take your precise meaning. (We recently had a set of anti-war Spaniards invade the Cellar. I tried to use Google's translation tools to speak directly to them, on their site in Spain -- and it just didn't fly. The translation was just not good enough for general usage, and there was a lot of confusion in trying to communicate two-way.)

The phraselator is interesting because it combines several developing technologies into one unit: handheld computing, voice recognition, and software translation. It's interesting when several technologies arrive at the same time, and bring about new approaches to the world.

You can easily imagine including wireless technology into this thing, so that if you wind up desperately needing stronger translations you could press a button and reach a human translator. Or include a memory card of some sort to load new languages on the fly. And after it's been developed for military applications, there's practically no cost to turn it into a consumer device; replace the military phrases with touristy ones, and suddenly any of us can visit any place in the world and chat with the locals, as long as we have one of these devices.

I'm sure everyone has done this before...

Babelfish translates the English phrase:
"Do not shoot, I come in peace"

Into this phrase in Portuguese:
"Não dispare, mim vêm na paz "

Which translates back to:
"It does not go off, me come in the peace"

I hope their translation is better. Yes, I realize Portuguese is nothing like Arabic, but Babelfish doesn't handle Arabic.

/cl

     Forget the device for the second and look at the pic! 15-20 years or so ago that could have been my friends and I dealing with a cop. I mean look at the expressions on the kid's faces. Studied, non-threatening politeness punctuated by the irritation of "Can we go now?"
     Exactly like American kids dealing with small town American cops when I was young. Of course in a small town you knew that the chance of having a witness if the cop decided to whip your ass was no greater than 0%. So we were always polite. I don't know what it was like for you city folk. Maybe the cops had better things to do.

Just barely related question

I've always wanted to know why the US Flag is embroidered backwards on uniforms. I seem to recall hearing that it's the normal way on the left sleeve, and the reversed way on the right sleeve, but it was never adequately explained why. Can someone enlighten me?

Re: Just barely related question

English: Please do not discharge the firearm at me. I am peaceful.

Babelfish to Portuguese: Por favor não descarregue o firearm em mim. Eu sou calmo.

Babelfish from Portuguese:Please it does not unload firearm in me. I am calm.

think bablefish's -language- to English function is broken. That Portuguese phrase could be transliterated as "Please no discharge the firearm at me", but babelfish seems to mangle it.

I got pretty accurate translations, both in and out from worldlingo but that may have been in part due to the fact that I chose German as a target language to play with.

I will say that a handheld device that can do translation on the fly beats the heck out of flipping through a Berlitz book.

Quzah, we reluctantly went to WWI to bail out our"friends". Our mistake was winning and leaving the peace to others which was the prime cause for WWII. To France, lead, follow or get out of the way.

One can also argue that since we had loaned so much money to the Allies, we had wanted to make sure that they paid.

World War I was a wierd war.

My favorite thing about World War I is the Christmas Soccer match. Good times, and too bad the English officers had to spoil it.