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Navy Unveils Polyglot Chat For Iraq
An anonymous reader writes "According to ScienceBlog, the U.S. Office of Naval Research, trying to keep friendly armies in Iraq from accidentally blowing each other to smithereens, is helping create software that connects instant messaging (IM) with machine translation (MT). The result: Chat software to be used in Iraq that automatically translates your messages into the correct language of the reader, called the the Coalition Chat Line - it's 'getting rave reviews from U.S. and allied-coalition personnel.'"
I imagine the Italians, Spanish, and Poles (among others) will be glad to have it.
Here I found the link to the slashdot story.
I don't know what IM protocol they want to use, but psychoid's excellent psybnc has had this ability for years (plus a lot of others, like encryption, single instance on a server for multiple users, bncnet abilities, etc.). Seems like they would be better off using off the shelf tested software than reinventing the wheel and probably doing so poorly.
http://www.psychoid.net/psybnc.html
Wikipedia knows all. The name suggests that they're hunting for a nonentitiy.
I seen to remember an early episode of King of the Hill where Hank sent Bobby on a "Snipe-hunt". It seems to be a long running practical joke in the south and at camps. Here's a link for you.
"Two harriers and at least one helicopter(I believe it had close to 30 British troops on board) were shot down that way. Nobody survived."
a ir craft_losses.pdf
http://www.armytimes.com/content/editorial/pdf/
Tornado GR4
Patriot system mistakenly identified aircraft as enemy missiles. 2 dead
F/A-18C Hornet
Patriot system mistakenly identified aircraft as enemy missiles. 1 dead
CH-46 Sea Knight
Under investigation. No hostile fire reported in area, according to AP. Dead include eight Royal Marines. 12 dead
H-3 Sea King
Two craft collide over water. Dead include 1 U.S. Navy crewman. 7 dead
No Harriers lost in OIF or the reconstruction, nor were any helicopters lost from Patriot firings.
I've laughed at a lot of these, but folks the Navy has been using chat for some time between ships underway at sea to conduct administrative type communications and for general questions. They DO NOT us it for dictating operational orders or policy. This is still done via voice communications and "official message traffic" (teletype style message in proper formatting released by the designated commander). So all you folks worried about soldiers getting their heads blown off by poor translation can breath easy...that type of info isn't passed via this method, even between our own troops who speak the same language.
Well I translated it to German using the fish and out came "unsere Truppen sind Ihr links, das Feldubungen 24 bis 48 Stunden lang tut, missachten bitte feindliche klingende Gerausche waehrend dieser Zeit" (umlauts adjusted), which, some broken grammar aside, describes completedly what the english writing sender intends to do and what he is asking from his hypothetical German colleagues.
Translating it back returns "our troops are it left, which do field exercises 24 to 48 hours long, ignore please hostile sounding noises during this time"
Instant messaging was a vital communication method during the Iraq war. I was recently involved in a privately-funded study and interview series on the Iraq war.
Ground-based voice communications were poor during the war because forces moved too fast and were too spread out for the out-dated ground-based voice network to catch up. One of the most vital communication links then became the satellite based instant messaging feature of the vehicle-mounted Blue Force Tracking system, which tracked force locations with a GPS and satellite uplink, and provided unit location mapping.
There were many stories of guys in tanks who's only communication link with command at times were their Blue Force Tracking instant messaging system. IM isn't just for 16 year old girls anymore.
Blue Force Tracking, though not widely enough deployed, was one of the biggest technological successes of the war, and was directly responsible for the almost perfect friendly-fire record in the war. The instant messaging feature was practically an after-thought, but we were very lucky we had it, even in limited deployment, and it proved itself as a mature war-time tool.
Conversely, the 507th Maintenance Company incident, where Jessica Lynch was captured, could have been prevented if they had the Blue Force Tracking system. They were last in a convoy and fell behind their convoy a couple miles, at which point they lost radio contact, and didn't know the exact convoy route without the convoy realizing they had fell behind. Now the first and last vehicle in an Iraq convoy is almost always equipped with a Blue Force Tracking unit so that the convoy leader immediately knows of a straggler and is always in communication with them via instant messaging.
Braddock Gaskill
someone a little more responsible and trained than 18 year old dropouts at the controls
I know it's hip to denigrate the education levels of the US military, but you couldn't be more wrong.
DoD has established a floor of 90% of recruits have HS diplomas.
The Army and Navy meet that 90%, the Marines at 95%, and the Air Force at 99%.
The military takes in very, very few Tier II (GED) or Tier III (non GED or non diploma) recruits. And those people must score at least in the top 1/2 (Army & Navy) or top 1/3 (USAF) on the ASVAB entrance exam.
And the typical 18 year old (brand new E-1 or E-2) is not at the controls of that thing by himself, if at all.
Two harriers and at least one helicopter
Got any further info on that? Because no, there was no British helo shot down in OIF by a Patriot.
March 23 - Tornado
April 2 - Possible F-18 Hornet
Patriot destroyed by F-16 after it locked on to the Viper
...second language. Chinese (Mandarin) is unquestionably the most common natively spoken language, and probably still ahead of English if you demand fluency in the lanaguage. English however is spoken extensively to some degree of competence outside of native English speaking countries, and is by far the most common second language. Mandarin is not spoken so much outside China.
It is very common in my experience to hear non-native English speakers conversing in English when in another non-English speaking country. (I might note that the grandparent espousing English as a world language seemed to be a native Spanish speaker himself.)
'Most people in the world speak English' is an exaggeration, but the figure is estimated at 1 in 4. English certainly has the best claim to the status of an 'international language,' is spoken or has official status in more countries than any other language, and is used in international organisations and communication more than any other language.
I'd also guess that it's the most popular second language among the non-native speaking soldiers in Iraq, which is what the grandparent was talking about (not so many Chinese there).
I learned russian there in '88 and I'd say it was more like 70-30 split. Three years later, we were rendered "mostly useless" when the Soviets cashed in their chips. That was quite a pisser. Spend 2+ years training to stop the communist hordes from pouring out of east germany through the fulda gap in a WW3 scenario, and then -poof-, the iron curtain colapses under its own weight. Once the party was over, the question of "what now" was pretty disheartening.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.