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DARPA Project Babylon: Universal Translator

Posted by michael on from the unleash-the-kitty dept.

silance writes "Take a look at this project from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)! This time the boys are trying to hammer out a portable, two-way, real-time, multi-lingual audible speech translator proposed to be run on everything from PDA's to wearable military hardware to workstations (to replace their PRE-EXISTING ONE-WAY real-time hand-held audible translators, of course!). The site contains descriptions of technical approaches, a technical milestones timeline, and a nifty Power Point presentation for the executive-types ;) They should give William Shatner a beta model out of pure respect... Here's a link to Google's cached HTML version of the Power Point presentation just in case. (P.S. - get a load of that logo at the bottom of the page!)"

7 of 324 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It has to be asked... by silance · · Score: 2, Informative

    Sorry...here's a link to info in the one-way translator http://www.sarich.com/translator/main.html Enjoy!

  2. Cached Version Fix by Grip3n · · Score: 2, Informative

    Looks like the link to the Google cache version of the document is in error. Here is the correct link

    --
    To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
  3. Flexible? Basic Research? DARPA? by upper · · Score: 5, Informative
    Yeah, wasting an exorbitant amount of tax dollars, sure. Like the internet.

    Yes, DARPA had one really great hit -- about 34 years ago.

    Be cynical as you want, but DARPA is the one government agency which is really flexible and has a vision. With the rise of corporate dependency on innovation, even in the academic world, DARPA is one of the last bastions of basic research.

    I can be awfully cynical about DARPA. My former employer's bread and butter was DARPA research. Which is to say that our primary products were proposals and billable hours. Many of those billable hours were spent documenting our activities -- presentations, review meetings, progress reports, final reports. Sometimes we had time for actual research, the direction of which changed with the whims of the DARPA program manager and was at best loosely correlated with the work proposed in the proposal. I'm not accusing my former employer of wrongdoing; that's the flavor of pointy hair induced by DARPA policies.

    By the way, DARPA doesn't do basic research. In basic research, most of which is still done in universities, you give lip service to vague area of applications, but the real goal is understanding. DARPA's research goals are always applied -- i.e. the goal is always to produce something useful, not simply to understand the world. But it's "early R&D", farther from being applicable than most R&D, and too much of a long shot for most R&D organizations. The rule of thumb is that if nobody else in the Dept. of Defense thinks they know how to solve the problem, DARPA works on it. (This translator work seems to be an exception).

    So most of DARPA's work is in the gap between basic research typical R&D. Ideas seem to get stuck in this gap for decades, which is why DARPA was created. But there's been too much pressure for short-term results for too long, so the agency is badly broken.

  4. Re:Give it to Hoshi by darkonc · · Score: 3, Informative
    Oh, and I don't think Hoshi's *that* cute.

    Compared to Shatner?? Are you crazy?

    Actually, if you watch closely, she hasn't quite got the bust of T'Pol, and she rarely gets the sexy scenes, but she's still quit nice... and far more attractive (in my mind) than Shatner.

    If you remember the scene in the (one of) the first episode where Hoshi, T'Pol and Tucker are resting in decon, I thought both of the women were pretty nice.

    --
    Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
  5. Re:Use the brain! by EQ · · Score: 2, Informative

    They have something like that already: its called the Defense Language Institute in Monterey CA. I'm a proud graduate of the Arabic program there over a decade ago. Can't remember much except military terminology and how to cuss. Of Course Arabic was my 5th langage after my native English, grandparent's German, 2 years of College Russian, and Soldiers/Programmer's Universal Language (Profanity).

    --
    Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
  6. Re:The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak by edsapir · · Score: 2, Informative

    It was "The Vodka is good but the meat is rotten." This is the famous mistranslation of a the Russian proverb: "The spirit is weak but the flesh is willing." The translation was Russian > English, not English > Russian > English. For the background on that story and machine translation in general, see this Economist article. And if you're into such issues check out http://fieldmethods.net

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    fieldmethods.net: nlp and stuff like that
  7. Re:Strikes me as fishy (pun unintended) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    As you note these are difficult languages to tackle. However this is the defense advanced research project agency. Their mission is to push the edge of what is technically possible and encourage new research. You do this by picking hard problems that haven't yet been solved.
    DARPA has a contract based funding model with deliverables. Yes, a researcher/group can get a DARPA grant and fail ( once! ) but sustained funding requires measurable success. So while the project may not work as well as DARPA likes, the researcher really ought to have some confidence in being able to deliver a prototype that works at some level (i.e. the solution shoul be measurably better in some aspect than whatever is currently available).