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Real-Time Computer-Based Translation in Iraq
[TheBORG] writes "The U.S. military has been testing software on laptops that translate English to Arabic and Arabic to English to have conversations with Iraqis without the need to have a Arabic linguist on hand. 'This year the military's Joint Forces Command has been testing laptops with such software in Iraq. When someone speaks into a microphone attached to the computer, the machine translates it into Arabic and reads that translation aloud over the PC's speakers. The software then translates the Arabic speaker's response and utters it in English.'" (See this related story from last year about this daunting machine-translation task.)
With some luck it will translate my banal whining into cutting social commentary.
From the article:
Given that "Al Qaeda" is Arabic for "The Base", and machine translation is notorious for its poor grasp of grammatical structure and homonyms, are soldiers going to have to deal with outputs like "AL YOUR QAEDA ARE BELONG TO US"?
Arabic is even worse than most human languages for being contextual and ambiguous. It's superb for writing poetry but betting lives on translating it automatically?
Because nothing establishes trust like attempting to communicate with people through the intermediary of an emotionless electonic device.
It looks like we've finally given up on actually trying to have our soldiers learn about these people's language and culture. I guess the less you understand someone, the less guilty you feel about bombing them.
...It is not before one hapless American, searching for the nearest terrorist, blurts out to a startled passerby "Please fondle my buttocks"
Why don't the iraqis just use subtitles?
Now we could get rid of all of those gay translators once and for all.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Reminds me of experiment I read about in old computer book... Program was created to translate from English to Russian and back. As a test, a phrase "Time flies like arrow" was translated to Russian and then back to English. It came back as "There are types of flies, called 'Time Flies' that enjoy eating arrows.
I rate it... 4 out of 5 mxlpfghs!
To put a witty saying into 120 characters, jst rmv ll th vwls.
My hovercraft is full of eels.
I used to work for a translation company and I've seen how much confusion can arise from even human translation, it makes me wonder really how prone to error this will be.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
#include
int main(int args, char **argv)
{
for(;;)
printf("%s\n", "dirka dirka jihad jihad");
}
"The Americans say they can wreck a nice beach... is that some kind of threat?"
.evom ton seod gis eht
Given speech recognition IN THE BEST OF CONDITIONS is still pretty inaccurate, and translation software is still very inaccurate, I can't imagine using both in an uncontrolled environment. You're likely just going to wind up insulting someone (which appears to be pretty easy to do in that part of the world) when they take offense to one of the random words of gibberish spewing forth from your laptop.
Soldier: Surrender now, we have you surrounded.
Computer: #All your base are belong to us#
Iraqis: [hysterical laughter]
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
IF anyone had doubts of bad software being harmless, think again: "What did he say!!?? He's going to do what!?? Smoke that foo'." ... That software better be good.
_Vishal www.squad9.com
You can probably have unbelievably simple conversations, like
"Do you want to kill me?" "No."
And for anything approximating a normal conversation, it's utterly fucking useless. Also, for the times when you actually need a very urgent, very good understanding of the language to prevent a lot of trouble, I bet it's beyond worthless.
At present, and for the forseeable future, there's no adequate substitute for humans that speak the language. I realize we throw Arabic speakers out of the military because they're gay and all, but maybe we could make an exception because their skills are necessary at present. No computer translation system is adequate for usage in a live military operation.
Oh, and IACL (I am A Computational Linguist).
Hopefully it won't suck like Babel Fish....
"Tell me, how do you speak, Mr. Abu-son, when you have no mouth?"
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
And you are right of course. This is more difficult than text-based translation, and will definitely not work. Last thing we need is more misunderstanding between our troops and the people over there.
They'll have to learn the hard way.
So this is the real reason they fired Bleu!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EOWpfLb4PBY
...that mows like a harvest.
I individualistically discover rendition executable very instrumental when apportioning admonition to Slash Dot.
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
Since when have lives mattered during this war? I doubt that most American soldiers would give a damn about talking to Iraqi civilians. Based on past incidents, they shoot first, kill innocent people, and then there are no consequences later.
Hell, even CNN is reporting about over 500,000 Iraqis being killed so far. Reuters reports that US casualties are rising.
Lives are already been lost, and at an astounding rate. I doubt this sort of technology will in any way save the lives of Iraqi civilians, or protect American troops.
Such a device would only need a hand-full of phrases to handle 99% of all use:
* "I am a Canadian, not an American, so don't kill me."
* "I voted for Kerry"
* "Run!"
* "Oh Shit!"
* "I don't care how big her tits are, YOU frisk her this time."
* "Cut and run? sounds like a great idea right now."
* "Quick, help me find my lower intestine!"
Table-ized A.I.
Why didn't they just hand out to the troops a booklet entitled "How to learn Iraqi Arabic in 30 easy lessons" instead?
I'm not saying that this isn't needed or it isn't beneficial to the troops. Considering how undermanned and under equipped the US Army is in Iraq, shouldn't those be higer priorities. Just my $0.02.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
1. Inflection and emphasis of some words over others
This is very important. Ever have somebody tell you "It's not what you say, it's how you say it"? It's true.
2. Colloquial expressions and figures of speech.
Right now, I'm looking at this book filled with conversational Arabic expressions I picked up in the U.A.E., most of which make absolutely no sense when translated into English. Do you know what "The son of a duck is a floater" means? Neither will U.S. troops or this device.
3. Body language
Many Arabic speakers in particular gesticulate while they speak. It is just part of their cultural identity and often, the body language is just as important as what is being said. U.S. troops in the field won't understand the importance of what they see, let alone what they hear, and this device certainly won't help them with that either.
This is just what I could think of in a minute or so. I'm sure there are many more fundamental problems with using the translation device. Note that with a real live translator, most of these problems are avoided. If the U.S. military kept its Arabic translators in their ranks instead of firing them based on their sexual orientation then maybe they wouldn't have to resort to these ridiculous devices.
This could explain why "Arabic to English BETA" and "English to Arabic BETA" recently were added to Google's language tools page.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
It's a bablefish!
... who think that computers are anywhere near ready to do realistic translation are people who have no concept whatsoever how complex human language really is. We will never have a working, reliable computer translation while we are still unable to fully explain or describe the rules of our own languages. Language is remarkably fluid and idiosyncratic, and the rules change not only from language to language, and from dialect to dialect within each language, but from individual to individual, and from utterance to utterance with each individual. So far, we have yet to invent a computer complex enough for the pattern-recognition skills necessary even to parse a majority of sentences correctly, much less decode them and then reconstruct them in a different language altogether.
None of this is to say that we can't ever do it, or that we shouldn't attempt. But the people who think it's possible with today's computer technology really don't understand the complexity of the problem.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
Should make for an interesting translation.
There's no way this is going to work. Anyone who has worked in US government contracting knows as well as I do that this is someone's cash cow and that's about it.
They'd be better off passing out books on Esperanto to the Iraqis and teaching it as a mandatory requirement for deployed forces. After all, the US will be in Iraq long enough for the entire population to learn the language.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
As someone who has studied translation (Japanese/English) at the University level, I can tell you that interpreting in real-time in a heavily context-sensitive language like Japanese or Arabic is an incredible challenge for even people who have spoken both languages for -decades-. When tiny grammatical changes can affect the entire meaning of a sentence, and voice recognition is by no means perfect, and homonyms come into play, the entire process is incredibly difficult. On a -personal- level, as someone who studies languages and desires a career in either teaching or translation, I'm worried not so much that it's replacing the human element, but that people believe it can be used without human intervention. The difficulty of interpretation and translation (this would be the former, for the record) is related to the distance, in linguistic construction, between the two languages, and few languages are further apart than English and Arabic. The increases in accuracy of machine translation also grow logarithmically; the more development that comes out of it, the less benefit you get. What I do believe we should be doing is investing money in both language education AND language technology. I also have a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth regarding the fact that the U.S. military is discharging qualified linguists that happen to be homosexual, but then I say that as a homosexual language student that wanted to join the military when I graduated. Now I'm looking to move to Canada.
Going back to school for entry-level jobs?
will it fit in my ear and does it come with chips?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Compute the value of the following expression:
Inaccuracy of speech recognition + inaccuracy of translation software + inaccuracy of text-to-speech software
Where "Inaccuracy of speech recognition" is equal to "Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all".
Where "Inaccuracy of translation software" is "Lost in Translation".
And where "Inaccuracy of text-to-speech software" is equal to "The occasional mispronunciation or wrongly-placed pause or accent or lack thereof."
SOLUTION: Well whatever it is it's bound to be at least twice as entertaining in output as Lost in Translation.
Or else "We are gone for lunch" (vocal english) -> "We are go for launch" (textual english) -> $@#!%$#%^#$^@ (a huge mishap)
It's not like anyone's leaving Iraq before 2009, so why rush it?
Oh please. Bleu Copas was by no means "flaming". Skeptical? See if you can "tell" if you didn't know to "ask" when you check out The Daily Show's hilarious take on the incident. Since anti-gay conservatives are as desirous of pragmatic thinking as they are 16 year old boys, let me ask you this: What do you think is more important, the safety of U.S. troops or the fact that the straight-acting man who is interpreting their words prefers men?
Seriously if you speak English LOUDLY ENOUGH people all ove the world can understand you.
damn i cant remember the actually funny thing i was going to say.....
god damn lameness filter wont let me post this in all caps....
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
That the insurgents can kill. Great, this will really win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis. Get a computer to translate, because I'm sure it is difficult to recruit locals to do the tranlating. I guess it is better than nothing at all, but I really question its utility. As the article indicates, it will give the speaker a choice of words if it is uncertain. What if the speaker plays dumb and starts selecting nonsensical options? Will they then proceede to beat the subject, or will they have to get him to a human tranlator? Either option wastes time. And at the rate were burning cash, the insurgents will win Iraq. Imagine some Chinese troops busting open your door, separating the family members, and then try to question you using some computer to do the translating. How would that make you feel, if English was your only language? I merely used Chinese troops as an example, mainly because they use a different alphabet than english.
Abort, Retry, Ignore? .
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Happy Friday the 13th to All - WELCOME to the first day of the rest of your life
even in some strict muslim countries, homosexuality is ok and permitted as long as it stays in the closet. I'm just saying you really, really don't want your translator to be found to be gay. YOur troops may not be safe then.
May God continue to bless America, and to our terrorist foes I say, dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all.
OK, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who just thought of the inane results of translating things back and forth with Babel Fish .... This better be some DAMN good translation software.
...
I can just imagine the "limitation of liability" portion of the end-use agreement from the company that developed the translation software...
Even worse, what happens when some on-the-edge person pulls out a hidden weapon and injures/kills a soldier (or whoever) because of incorrect translation? Oh, is this just part of the "risk of the business"?
i love you, you love me -> i'll shoot you, you'll shoot me
Let's also use these devices with the North Korean diplomacy!
That way you could also fuck up two regions of the world simultaneously.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Colorless green dreams sleep furiously.
The article starts:
"One day, a U.S. soldier entering tense situations without the assistance of an Arabic interpreter might rely on two-way translation software in mobile computers."
The idea of occupation forces in Iraq relying on machine translations is frightening. I don't believe it will work, but that is only the start of my concerns. We're not talking about translating technical conversations, or asking where the bathrooms are. We're talking about frighteed 19 year olds who are afraid of each other. How could Americans expect a machine translation to make up for our near total ignorance of other cultures? It's hubris to imagine that a technical fix can bridge the gap between societies that have developed independently for more than *thousand years*.
On Wednesday, the Wasington Post reported that of 12,000 FBI special agents, only 33 have even limited proficiency in speaking Arabic. The FBI's screening process turns away people who have had a lot of exposure to foreigners!
We're terrible at understanding other cultures. That's the downside of growing up surrounded by oceans. A liberal arts education is supposed to help with that, but even my expensively educated friends and I don't speak other languages or spend much time abroad. How could we think we can "bring democracy" to another culture?
I know, I know, I'm ranting. It's just a dumb idea some desk jockey in the Pentagon came up with when his boss told him to "do something." But why aren't people laughing?
Don't mess with The Phone Company. Piss them off and you'll be using two tin cans and a piece of string.
I can think of a few phrases in American slang as proving particularly interesting to translate:
"Do you know where the action is in this town?"
"I was blown away by his actions"
"He has to come up for air or he will die from exhaustion."
"Don't try to do a snow job on me."
"My grandmother gave me an earful about the neighborhood."
"This computer program has a glitch."
"What is going down?"
"The gut issue is about what we are going to do now."
"Put the hammer to the floor or we will be late for the wedding."
"Recently I don't have it all together."
"Her clothes make her look like a hooker."
"Everything is in the bag. There is nothing to worry about."
"Shut up or I'll give you a knuckle sandwich."
"Watch out for all the kooks in this neighborhood."
"You are completely nuts if you think I will go with you."
"Working on a computer for me is a piece of cake."
"Shut up or I will pop you."
"This whole operation stinks."
"I want you to give me a straight answer."
"I am really stressed by all the recent world events."
"I am tired of all your complaining. Take a hike."
"This is a sale. Everything is up for grabs."
"You don't want to carry a wad like that with you in the big city."
"After you waste him, throw the body in the river."
"He is a whiz at the computer."
the suicide bombers and getting rocks thrown at you are easily translated...
"Get the fuck out of our country"
At last, we have universal translator of Star Trek.
A box that repeatedly yells out "Do not run! We come in peace!!"
Another typical "news" story that has anything BUT news in it. The writer obviously has never heard of SpeechGear. http://speechgear.com/
That makes sense of why the American presence is still not appreciated.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
MARINE SERGEANT: "Have you seen any Al Qaeda fighters in the area?"
COMPUTER: "WHICH EXPLODING DOGS HAVE PRODUCED CHOCOLATE RECENTLY?"
IRAQI FARMER: "Dogs? Chocolate? What are you talking about?"
COMPUTER: "ATACK GIANT PUMPKIN MONSTERS WITH GREEN FUSELAGE."
MARINE SERGEANT: "I asked you a QUESTION, mister. Are you trying to be evasive?"
COMPUTER: "ELECTRON GOLD FOIL AZIMUTH TRICKLE MYSTERY."
IRAQI FARMER: "You are not making sense."
COMPUTER: "I EXPLICATE LARGE BREASTS BY PLATYPUS."
MARINE SERGEANT: "I've had enough of your crap, if you don't answer my question double-quick I'll shoot your family."
COMPUTER: "GYROSCOPIC RAINBOW SYSTEM ROTATING PIG BURN MODULE."
IRAQI FARMER: "You are a crazy person!"
COMPUTER: "EXPEDITE GNEISS CAMEL FLOSSING."
MARINE SERGEANT: "I warned you. Pop some caps in their asses." [SOUNDS OF M-16s FIRING] "Tango alpha sierra two niner to base, we have engaged and neutralized hostiles at map coordinates delta three seven by alpha one niner. Now moving into sector delta four, over."
I don't speak your crazy moon language.
The phrase "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." is a Groucho Marx quote. I'm not sure of the original context, but it is an example of how English (or any other natural language) is notoriously difficult to handle. For example, the sentence "Time flies like an arrow." may be justifiably interpreted in a variety of ways:
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
We are your friends Why are you running away
This technology is pretty simple: Soldier asks "Do you have a conceiled weapon?" Computer translates to "Please move head up and down". Iraqi does, soldier shoots, the terrorist-statistics go up again and Bush can claim the war against OMGTERRORISTS!!! is going smoothly but another investment of approx the BNP of Canada in the war is necessary.
I don't see how any part of this type of system would be considered truely real time, as the title suggests. There doesn't seem to be either a soft or hard real time constraint and I doubt they are investing in a real time computing platform.
The original could also be read as "First they, the Americans say the can recognise speach..."
If they actually got that thing to work reliably, I'd be very impressed.
Arabic varies WIDELY from country to country. Learning Modern Standard Arabic and a regional dialect (I studied Egyptian) is almost like learning two different languages at once - words, verb conjugation, plural forms, grammar, etc. change between dialects and standard Arabic.
I wonder if this computer translates Iraqi colloquial as well as Modern Standard, or requires the speaker of Arabic to speak Modern Standard (which would limit its usefulness to translating fairly higher class Iraqis)?
I hope it works. A language barrier is a nasty thing, particularly in a war zone.
You should hear it translate, "Your Mama Wears Combat Boots", in Iraqi. It's hilarious, because it's true!
Why do I get the Iraqi word for "Childcare" when I say "Kidnapping"?
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
... they were already using portable translators of a kind?
"Wait, I'm getting the translation, it says..."
?
You-called-my-mother-a-WHAT,-son-of-a-rabid-camel
"Aw, shoot...wait, don't translate that."
the comic value of poor translation software may serve as a great ice break between the locals and the troops.
In english an explicit translation would read "By the grace of god this road is only for Tanks" - in German it could be paraphrased more usefully as "Auctung Minen!".
Why don't they do an video translator version? Example your digital camera has a database of foreign language images like Chinese. Just point the camera in front of the image and it will be translated to English. Like a pattern recognition software in real time.
You could point it to a sign of a restaurant and get a English meaning or near enough.
What do you reakon.
Deano the Fisko
it "reads arabic aloud" and it "utters english" -- flippant use of synonym generator or distaste for the english language... you decide!
Check http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=IQ
I recently had Google give me a translation of a Spanish sentence. The Spanish for "meatloaf" was rendered as "rolls of perforated meat." I do hope the military can do better than this.
This assumes your subjects are literate, which I gather is true for the majority of Iraqis but not all of them. Here in my neighborhood in Japan we've got a rising foreigner population, at least some of whom are going to show up at the hospital on any given day complaining of chest pains, show up at a hotel and need a room, show up at a tourist site and want tickets for six. The hospital can afford a very pricey (per month and per minute) contract with a 24x7 multilingual medical emergency translation service: you dial, hand the phone to the patient, get them to speak a few sentences to a qualified screener, then the screener transfers you to an appropriate translator. For folks who CAN'T afford this sort of service and don't need it because lives are on the line, like the little sushi shop down the street, the government has handily prepared a visual phrasebook.
It looks something like a map which folds out into sections based on what circumstance you're in. For example, the hospitality phrasebook has a "turn the map this way if you are a waiter" section. You scan down the list of phrases and find "How many people are in your party?" Then you give the map to the customer, and point at the appropriate block, where it says "How many people are in your party?" in Japanese, Portuguese, English, Chinese, and Korean (that covers about 90% of our immigrant population, 99% if you assume the Peruvians can get by with the Portuguese). They hold up an appropriate number of fingers. You point to "Smoking or non-smoking?" They point to "Non-smoking" You point to "Thank you! Please follow me!"
Its my understanding that the US military used exactly this technique during the Occupation (I've saw one of the sheets in a war museum once -- oh, boy, every joke you have ever heard about Japanese English wouldn't come close to describing the reverse). The sheets are dirt-cheap when produced in quantity, you can carry them with you anywhere and they don't break if you drop them or get sand in them, and they can be enhanced with pictures to cover even non-literate people. Plus you can train someone to use them in under a minute, which is important: "We are chasing terrorists fleeing the scene of a recent attack. Which way did they go? Please point the direction or point to "I don't know"". Do you really want to be the soldier miming "Excuse me, grandpa, could you speak directly into this microphone and try not to mumble so much? Oh, and the Basran accent there sort of throws off the software, could we get a little more Baghdad? Thanks, thats perfect."
Anyhow, they're no substitute for having a fluent translator on the scene but, hey, that isn't always an option. And anything we can do to facilitate cooperation between the troops and the Iraqis is a good thing in my book.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Is this the same software Borat Sagdiyev used to translate the title of his film? Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Surely Monty Python has a patent on this?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
And thus was born unto man, The Universal Translator.
Which went on to start so many new wars in outer space...
This sounds like the plot to a bad sci/fi movie where we accidentally start WWIII.
University research project - yes
Dictating a diary - yes
Medical transcription - maybe
Negotiating in wartime with people who are already apprehensive about us being there - absolutely not
Is it any wonder that American diplomacy so often leads to war? We literally can't talk to most of the rest of world in their languages. 500 billion dollars, tens of thousands dead; but at least we have laptop translator with which to console grieving families.
"My hovercraft is full of eels"
:(
and then poked me with the electric cattle prod again.
I'd tell him what he wants to know, if only I could understand the question.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
Arabic is even worse than most human languages for being contextual and ambiguous.
Eh? I call bullshit on this.
Are you adequate?
Hope it's better than the vocal word recognition used by the Australian Taxation Office in its phone system. It can't even distinguish between the words "yes" and "no". You'd be completely stuffed if it didn't time out and offer a standard phone menu as a fall-back.
""The U.S. military has been testing software on laptops that translate English to Arabic and Arabic to English to have conversations with Iraqis without the need to have a Arabic linguist on hand"
It's also a lot safer for Arab Linguists.
The only thought that comes to mind is... "lazy bastards".
;), but i'm sure other people here have learned enough of the language when they go on holiday to ask for directions, get by in a restaurant, etc etc. We're only talking about the same basic level here, and i'd bet in 90% of situations you wouldn't need a linguist on hand.
It's going to be decades before this thing can do complicated conversation, if ever. Right now it's only good for general instructions/concepts. Why not just learn some Arabic?
Take a decent amount of fairly intelligent soldiers, and put them on a 1-2 week crash courses of basic Arabic, with a strong emphasis on the types of phrases they're going to need in their highly specific situation.
They don't need to be able to write it, and they don't need a brilliant grasp of the grammar... they just need to do the things their job requires them to do.
Maybe not the Americans on this board
I've known people in the private sector in Iraq who have done exactly this, and got by. Why not the US soldiers?
Prof. Farnsworth: This is my Universal Translator. It could have been my greatest invention, but it translates everything into an incomprehensible dead language!
Cubert: [into the translator's microphone] Hello.
Universal Translator: Bonjour!
Prof. Farnsworth: See? Utter gibberish!
I want the name and address of the guy that wrote the DARPA proposal for this project. I have a couple of completely impossible and unrealistic CS projects in mind and I would need somebody with the ability to spin it a little bit ...
Is this supposed to build bridges between US soldiers and Iraqi civilians? The first thing they're gonna get in machine translated arabic is "Love you", meaning "Fuck you". I think the US regime is putting way too much trust in machines, thinking a brutalized nation will have respect for a soldier speaking to them like a cyborg. How about learning arabic? Can't hurt ya! Maybe in the process you'll learn something about the people your killing.
"People of Iraq - All your base are belong to us!!"
Waiting for you by the bridge
The universal translator is a fictional device common to many science fiction works.
Don't belive everything the americans say there liars, eg, PH, WTT.
The dismissal of this many Arabic-speaking military linguists *has* had an enormous impact on the military's ability to function efficiently in the Middle Eastern theatre. Believe it or not, the Army is now recruiting linguists on Craigslist with the following ad:
I have also seen a classified ad from the Washington Post from the U.S. military, seeking Arabic linguists (among others) for training and employment. Clearly, discharging all those Arabic-speaking members of the military because of their sexual orientation was foolish, to say the least.
As for the argument that these soldiers should just "clam up" and "not tell the military" they are gay, many LGBQ people would love to serve their country this way. However, you should go to the previously mentioned Servicemembers' Legal Defense Network website at http://www.sldn.org/ to read about the everyday harassment, "witch hunts," and physical and emotional violence inflicted upon gay people by the military in violation of its own "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rules. I think you would be extremely surprised to find out how many servicemen have been killed in the past five years by members of their own divisions/units; the Armed Forced do not exactly issue press releases every time something like this happens. The bottom line is that the vast majority of LGBQ soldiers are forced out against their will, as they try to be quiet and inconspicuous and to serve their country.
overheard: "My hovercraft is full of eels ... that will promptly explode and cause death to you impirialist scum!"
Wasn't there some urban legend about a translation of "out of sight, out of mind" becoming "blind idiot" when run through a machine? When you have a machine interpreting your words but not your thoughts, miscommunication is inevitable, and pain and suffering will most likely follow in a place like Iraq.
(also, there is some sort of irony at having such translation machines operating in the original lands where the biblical Babel (where many languages were born when "god" confused the humans trying to build that tower) was meant to be, but I'm not clever enough to weave it into my comments....)
Is it too much to put some Marine through some schooling to learn Arabic? That might give a little help to some much needed public relations in Iraq.
Now, being generous while categorizing those results gives:
Complete Success = 2 out of 9 = 22% (Spanish and Chinese)
Almost successfull = 1 out of 9 = 11% (Japanese)
Catastrophic failures = 3 out of 9 = 33% (Portuguese, Italian and Korean)
Serious failures = 3 out of 9 = 33% (French, German and Arabic)
How they get to sell software which fails more than half the times at translating such a simple sentence is truly beyond me...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Thank goodness nobody said Universal Translator yet
Soldier: "Hello. We are friendly. Please, tell us where the main square is."
Computer (in arabic, of course): "Hi. We no harm. Please, where your nose is."
Arab: "I do not understand. My nose is on my face."
Computer: "I am not to understand. I have square face."
Soldier: "Please speak to this computer in short and easy sentences."
Computer: "Please, speak to this machine and not to me and use short words."
Arab: "Why should I speak to this machine? Am I not worthy to speak to an American?"
Computer: "Why the machine speak? I am not worthy to speak English."
Soldier: "This is a computer. It translates words. Where's the main square?"
Computer: "This a machine. Puts words in mouth. Where is the square face?"
Arab: "I do not wish to be put words in my mouth. I have nice face, your face is ugly!"
Computer: "I do not want to speak with you, your face is ugly."
Soldier: "No need for such words. I just want to know the location of main square."
Computer: "I will not talk to you. Where are ugly faces hidden?"
Arab: "They are all in Washington!"
Computer: "Everyone is in Washington."
Soldier quickly returns to the NATO base to inform commander that there's lot of Al Qaida operatives preparing terrorist attacks in Washington.
OK private, turn it on...
[crackle] PISS OF IMPERIALIST PIG-DOGS!
Seems to be something wrong Sarge..
THIS LAND WILL BE A GRAVEYARD FOR INFIDEL OIL THEIVES!
OK lad, turn it off and we'll go back to using the white phosphorus.
... about starting a war
anyone else thinking of mars attacks? "we come in peace" *starts killing everyone*
Finaly a universal translator now they just need to minatureise the lap top and implant it into my skull
Has anyone ever though that translation isn't something you should hand to an electronic device? Especially in an environment and language where you can easily choose the wrong way of translating something and twisting the meaning right by 180 degrees just by the use of an "inferior" word?
I don't even want to go to the lengths to say that the software might have glitches akin to the old Monty Phyton joke mentioned in the subject line. But having something that should be translated as "Can I stay with you for tonight" translated as "Can I sleep with you tonight" could have some implications you might not be prepared for.
This also does not take into account the cultural differences, where something that might be ok to ask for or say could be taken as a grave offense in other parts of the world. A human interpretor would certainly tell you that it's not a good idea to say what you're about to say. A machine will just go ahead and translate it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
All your country are belong to us
I'm just saying you really, really don't want your translator to be found to be gay. YOur troops may not be safe then.
And how exactly are the Arabs going to find out that your translator is gay, when you yourself do not know? It's not like gays have to wear special pink armbands or anything. (Yet.)
Eight million Arab-Americans, living inside the United States, and no Arabic translators?
I'll tell you why, as an Arab-American.
I filled in the application on line for a linguist job, and system administration jobs, just two weeks before 9/11. Before, not after, on the US Army's website, on the CIA's website, and on the NSA's website. Well, three week, after 9/11, I went to the Army unit in town, to check with open heart to serve my country.
Five hours of the worst humiliation that you can ever imagine, including, but not limited to, insults (sand niger, camel shit-face, desert monkey, etc), slaps, rough elbows, bushes, and finally a gun drawn to my face, with fire-angry looks, telling me that this better be the last time I show my stinking face in any "respected Christian army barracks". That was at the recruitment center in Minneapolis, MN, in the presence of six soldiers, and two officers.
Six months later, On my first flight visiting my retired uncle in Florida, who worked at the Mayo clinic for 10 years, then for the University of Minnesota for 20 more years (at that time, I was a Unix/Sun Junior system administrator at AT&T), my Linux laptop was confiscated from me at the airport, because it is running a "hackers OS", never seen it again since, my clothes was trashed in front of hundreds of people, including the security guard holding my underwear infront of a crowd, saying that it smells like a "shitty arab", my cell phone was smashed to uncover the "hidden explosives". Then finally I was put under detention for a day. Then I was let go, because simply my uncle called to see what caused me to miss my flight, he knew about the situtation. He called one of his regular patients, who was a 30+ years member of the State Congress, who made his request to the "Airport Manager" to stop his "personal patriotism", and let me go. I guess I am one of the lucky ones to survive NOT ending in Guantanamo, or a much worse place.
Let's not talk about the constant harrasment at my previous job as a sys admin. let's ignore the ex-neighbors trashy attitude towards me and my wife. Let's bypass the way I left Minnesota, to Wisconsin, just to get away from this constant fake smile, that show sharp angry teeth within only a few minutes of conduct. Let's put aside also that I was not able to find a job in IT (I am a RHCT and a CCNA) for over a year, just because of my Arabic Muslim name, inside America, my own country.
Go ahead, laugh, say your insults, do your thing, feel good trashing Arabic and Muslims. You are not impressing me at all.
Arabic translators? sure. Just go to http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en. Or, go to http://www.google.com/intl/ar/ , then click on translate. But do not knock on my door at any time soon.
"We come in peace. ACK! ACK! ACK!"
But, my limited experience is that this is combining two technologies that are decades away from being ready for prime time -- computer assisted translation and voice recognition -- and expecting the result to work.
I use Bablefish occasionally and the results are generally entertaining, but not very useful --- especially with Japanese which someone points out elsewhere presents many of the same problems as Arabic.
And I have never encountered a voice recognition system that worked worth a damn even after training. In this case, the software will not be trained to recognize one of the speakers who will very likely speak in a dialect, and will probably be under considerable stress. Unlikely to work often or well, I think.
If the software includes an automated phrase book, that may have some utility ... at least until some 14 year old wangs the laptop with a brick. The merit of an automated phrasebook is that since it is just a mechanical parrot, you may be limited in what you can say, but at least you know it is pronounced right.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
> Given that "Al Qaeda" is Arabic for "The Base"
Yeah, "Base" or "Foundation", hence (so i heard) Asimov's "Foundation" novel was translated into Arabic with the title "Al Qaeda"
What prevents using this software on all phone lines or at least all international distance call lines and use english speaking analysts or even context analyzing software, whenever phrases like bomb, jihad, martyrdom, sheik, infidel, artifical fertilizer, flight school, halaal, etc. are encountered?
some soldier get beheaded for insulting someone's mother accidently?
"How could we think we can "bring democracy" to another culture?"
Most so called democraties are illusions.
Take the output from the translation, feed it back into the laptop and see what you get ... enlish -> arabic -> english. My guess is that the initial input is nowhere near the final outcome.
Can someone with better knowledge about how military works tell me if the cost and safety concerns of a human translator may be the driving force behind opting for a crazy idea like this? I mean they will have to have a decent translator with every unit roaming the critical areas or atleast in places where they are prone to come in contact with the local population and may need to interact with them (which almost covers the whole of Iraq given the current situation).
An automated translating system may totally screw things up but its expendable and in the worst possible case they will have to shoot some more bullets towards civilians because of a bad translation - which is not much different from the current situation and is something which may appeal to the 'shoot first and think later' policy which armed forces around the world have when they are in combat. Oh and it won't earn them new friends for sure except if the translator comes up with a Monty Python type translation, although I don't think anything seems funny when the person standing in front is holding a gun to your head.
Politicians and Pedophiles: Two groups of exploitive bastards who are most dangerous when they're thinking of children.
the soldiers are given language lessons in arabic.
Nearly all Iraqis speak Farsi, not Arabic, and the government operates primarily in English.
stereotypes.
When I lived in Japan, it was the opposite. The Americans I knew spoke better Japanese than the Brits or Aussies, even though we had been there less time.
Consider your anecdote refuted...
I am reminded of the computer translator in Mars Attacks: "We want peace, we want peace"....
1. You don't trust the local translators. If not, what are you doing there ...
2. You don't trust US soldiers with Arabic. Expensive? Afraid your soldiers will "go native"? Language is culture so learning a language may endear that culture to you - hard to be "objective" then, and kill people. Better to keep the to-be-killed objectified.
3. You don't trust people. That's the American Way!!!
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Yeah maybe we shouldn't fire the Arabic speakers we actually have for a start http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/14/attack/m ain529418.shtml
just an idea
I know, I'm a bad bad man.
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
Translating Jessica Simpson songs into Arabic...
Now thats the real way to defeat the insurgency!
Learn to know, the dark side of the force, and you will achieve a power greater than any Jedi...the power to save your w
This will simply help to misunderstand what the discussion is all about, an automated translator could be helpful for people who already know arabic and english, but otherwise an automated tool will never work with arabic language because its very rich and a single word could have thousands of meaning depending on the way you use it and its context.
_ disarm.html
I know its not the same, but I had posted few days ago about Google translator and how it deal with arabic-english translation http://hatem.phpmagazine.net/2006/10/not_tkhaddak
In other words I find such decision just stupid and not serious at all.
The US military have always been able to Wreck a nice beach but often lack calm incense
I also highly doubt the funniest joke in the world can be translated accurately into Arabic by a computer, though it would prove a formidable weapon.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Here: http://malfy.org/
I've seen it on TV... but apparently not for Arabic yet? huh.
I meant that the portuguese->english one is completely right, not the english->portuguese one of course...
BTW, it seems to me that it's exactly the same case as with Italian.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
hello, my name is Akbhar......KABOOM......
This board really is full of leftist trolls. Might as well be Democratic Underground.
This/.submission was created using Dragon's NaturallySpeaking speech
:-)
recognition software running under wine on Linux system.
This technology is actually over a decade old. In the early 1990s,
at Dragon Systems, the creators of Dragon NaturallySpeaking the world's
first continuous speech recognition software product,a hand-held system
which did exactly the same thing between English and the languages
used in the Serbian and Croatian regions of Europe was demonstrated.
This device was deployed for use as a translator to gather information
from non-english speaking persons in that region.
The owners of Dragon Systems, Jim and Janet Baker, started the
company when Apple ][e's were considered state-of-the-art technology.
They sold the company in the late 1990s(iirc) but their software,
"NaturallySpeaking" is still probably the best continuous speech
recognition product on the market. What you consider that they were
able to package a translator in a hand-held unit over a decade ago, you
have to consider the genius of being able to accomplish that within the
constraints of the hardware that was available then.
The scientists and software developers who worked at Dragon Systems were
a very special group working at a very special company.
The big question today, since speech recognition software is still
only 98 percent accurate when it is optimally configured and the user's
optimally trained. That means two words out of every 100 are wrong.
This leads us to the big question: since a 2 percent error rate is
much too large for speech recognition tools to be useful in the mass
market, when and how will speech recognition systems be able to reach an
accuracy level, and ease-of-use that people will actually find useful
and comfortable?
The error rate necessary for large-scale acceptance of speech
recognition software is much much smaller than 2 percent. Before speech
recognition software can be useful for the general public the error rate
needs to be pushed down to 0.02 percent, which is an error rate of 2
wrong words per every 10,000 words. To achieve that level of accuracy
using the current techniques would require that the speech data models
being used increase in size by 20 to 30 orders of magnitude (maybe),
and would require who knows how much more computing power.
Clearly a better approach is needed.
As many people have pointed out already, language is a very complex thing. I would suggest that it takes a large portion of our life to master our own language, and we continue to master it throughout our life - it is ever changing.
It seems almost unreasnoble to think that a computer could effectively translate using context, social values and the plethora of other elements which make up the world's languages.
I'm not sure if people here have experienced Douwe Osinga's Poetry in Translation, which uses the Google API to translate an english string of your choice into french, and then back into english. The results are frequently amusing and indeed only the most basic of sentences will be returned to the user in it's original form.
"The fast brown fox jumped on the putrefied dog."
It's here: http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/malfy-b.html
Is this why the war keeps going badly?
Soldier: (into computer) I am here to help you. Show me where the problem is.
Computer: (translating) "I am here to have sex with your daughter. That is not a problem, is it?"
Iraqi: Kill!
(yeah, I know, I know; these things aren't in widespread use yet. It's a joke; laugh!)
Or, even worse, will it be unable to detect idiom (like all other translation software ever)? We'd have to make sure the soldiers are trained to stick to the most translatable of Americanian, or sooner or later it's all going to kick off, isn't it?
Still, as long as nobody loses their head then there'll be no problems. Wait! I didn't mean that the way it came ou-
Technology Review had another article on this in august.
US Soldier: Where is the rebel base?
PC: (synthesized Arabic translation)
Iraqi: (Arabic response)
PC: Dear Aunt, let's go ice cream 2 Live Crew!
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
technology cant be far off now, plug it in your ear and the universe speaks english. Guess we Americans won't care anymore if they "learn the language!".
Bombs, missles, IEDs... don't need a stinkin' laptop for those.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
AT! AT! AT! AT! AT!
Translated: "We come in peace, don't run away"!
Nope, no sig, nada.
In related news, the Washington Post reported a few days ago that only 33 out 12,000 FBI agents had "some" proficiency in Arabic, i.e. not even fluency but just some ability. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/10/10/AR2006101001388.html
So much for the Administration's foreign language initiative, which I knew would go nowhere. I think this points to a basic weakness in the conservative mindset (not just conservative American, but conservative Western or perhaps conservative in any culture) - distaste for or inability to learn from other languages or cultures.
When I hear the loud voices here in the States saying, "If you can't speak English, go back to where you came from," I wonder what they would think of the reply "If our soldiers can't speak Arabic, they should go back to where they came from ..."
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
An Iraqi Kurd I used to work with trained me in the finer details of Arabic.
Us Kut = Shut Up (Pronounce both U's like oo in book) Kalib bin Kalib = Dog, son of a Dog Kul Hara = Eat Shit (again, pronouce the u like oo in book. Also use some phlegm when saying hara) Kul Noona = Eat my bogies (or Boogers if your American) (Slightly Childish but fun)
Nothing new since Thursday?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
...expressions, metaphors, onomatopoeias, sarcasm, similes, homonyms, synonyms, heteronyms, or homophones, this program will probably work well, within the limits of voice-recognition software, of course. Currently, text-based translations aren't accurate or even necessarily coherent. (English to any language back to English in Babelfish, anyone?) Most people who have tried voice-recognition software would understand that you can get a computer to recognize "Goddamn computer!" and not much else, even if you speak. Like. A. Robot. I would hate for the next major war to be started based on the combat translation equivalent of "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" into "the wine was good, but the meat was undercooked."
inkossigle...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
It speaks in Arabic, but utters in English? Does this mean it was written around the English language or the Arabic?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
is slashdot down?
The sentence you chose is vulnerable to a lot of factors that make translation difficult. It contains a contraction, for one thing. Worse, it contains a pronoun, so all at once it's subject to problems among languages with gendered pronouns versus those without -- that's why the gender gets thrown away in the German, Italian, Portuguese, and French versions. It also contains a past participle predicate, which is another construction that has analogues in many languages but different actual meanings (hence the Japanese version).
All the same, it does pinpoint how freakin' amazingly awful Babelfish Korean is. Even Japanese is better.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
We should use that translation technology from "Mar's Attacks" "..we come in peace...take us to your leader...."
My Hummercraft is full of eels.
"I for one welcome our eel-filled hovercrafts, in Soviet Russia", err. Wait...
No, no. I mean: "My hovercraft is full of eels!"
That'll go over well.
Now all we need is a translator that will turn Bush-speak into understandable English.
They must come up with a very good Static Discontinuity Grammar (SDG) tool to correctly analyze every possible sentence. Ordinary language is an incredibly complex mode of communication and scientists still don't exactly know how we are able to understand it. How do they expect to handle a problem that we don't completely understand ourselves?
The first core problem is to discover the grammatical rules of the two languages. This is far more complicated than you can possibly imagine. These rules are needed to write the code needed to understand the input language and generate the output language. Every regional zone has unique intricacies that are reflected in their dialect.
A machine cannot use language like a human, nor process or translate. We humans carry so much cultural loading to our languages that it is a pipe dream. In the 1960 and 70s the Canadian federal grants were fat, linguists and computer specialists explored this to know end.
They would have as much luck as babelfish. Most of the times you can get the general idea across but it like using a 5 year old to translate for you.
I doubt this system will provide much success.
"The Bene Gesserit witch must leave!"
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I'll agree, the automatic translation is probably bad. The question is, is it worse than nothing?
Leaving aside new lieutenants, most US military get the stupid kicked out of them early. If the translation is unreliable, they'll figure that out pretty damn fast, and will up their salt intake appropriately when the machine talks. However, it might give them a slightly better idea of what frantic-looking woman screaming at them is saying, whether it's "Get down before the sniper removes what little brains you have!", "You killed Kenny you bastards!" or "Eat C-4, infidel pig-dogs!"
The real problem won't come until the translation gets into an analog of the uncanny valley, where both they and the arabs think it may be trustworthy, but subtle context and ambiguity is the main source of screw-up. It's always the stuff that you trust that has the easiest time getting you killed.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
So is this the beginning towards a Universal Translator??
Futurama and other sci-fi series references aside, this is something I'd like to see really progress. Something that can cross translate the top 10 spoken languages in the world.
That's absolutely true. A "shukran" here and there would go a long way.
You also have to keep in mind that when the soldiers aren't out doing their jobs as soldiers, they're in lockdown at the base, isolated from the Iraqis for the sake of security. So their days aren't really one big immersive experience where they go to dine at Iraqi restaurants, hit up the local sookhs (sp?) to barter the cost of Iraqi goods, and so on. It might therefore be possible to remain ignorant of the language and cultural conventions for years. To the soldiers, the Iraq experience is like one long training simulation where they are deliberately removed from the people they are killing/protecting (depending on your politics).
Plus, keep in mind that the bar for admission to the military has been lowered significantly because the various military branches have not met recruiting quotas for years now. Even men and women without high school diplomas or of subnormal intelligence are now welcome to join up. The U.S. military used to court only the best and brightest, but they sadly no longer have that luxury. To ask Privates Dumbass and Cornpone to learn Arabic might be asking too much--it therefore necessitates the use of live translators or at least live translation.
it's just a paper weight. If you put a bullet in a translator...oh wait...
The NSA wiretapping program already has this.
On the other hand, and freely contradicting my earlier post, quite a few lives might have been saved by putting the Arabic version of "Stop the car now!" over a loudspeaker at a roadblock. "Move away from the convoy", "Does anyone need a doctor", and a few others might be winners.
They'll be there for extended stays, their work requires interacting with the locals, and their downtime is dedicated to endless training already.
Dink! DINK DINK... Dink? Dink, dink. Dink Dink... Dink, Dink, Dink, Dink Dink Dink!
This just shows how the US military is completely detached from reality. For the amount of money they're pouring into this system (which will never work correctly; automated translators screw up even between languages as similar as Spanish and Italian, let alone English and Arabic - of which there are dozens of variants), they could train and hire hundreds of human interpreters, that could not only translate the words, but also understand and adapt information related to the culture, the person's state of mind, their body language, etc..
If I was a cynical person I'd say the real objectives of this are:
a) Detach the soldiers from the locals even more, so they feel like they're playing a computer game and don't have any second thoughts when they're told to kill a lot of innocent people.
b) Move a lot of money from the taxpayer's pockets into the pockets of the military contractors developing these systems.
RMN
~~~
maybe no one finds out. I'm just saying.... but then alot gay guys will do just what alot of straight guys do in how they talk or check out someone or someones body they find interesting. most gay people are obviously so, it's been no suprise nine out of ten times to me or anyone else to learn that certain people among my relatives or in school or work were gay. bi is harder to tell, or guys who prefer transgendered-into-female folk. anyway I was just making a statement about particularly strict arab cultures, certainly not about who can do what for a living. I have similar observations about women in combat who get taken prisoner in arab countries, going to be really bad for them too ('cause Mohammed by their beliefs was cool about raping slaves and enemies' women). I'm not saying women can't be good warriors, just you don't want to get imprisoned being one in certain places.
(US Side): I'm picking up a lot of static ... wait, that's better ... Yes, sir, I'll inform the citizen he needs to move along because this is a restricted zone...
(Iraqi Side): What? What did you say? Can you repeat that? What, my grandmother is made of cheese? Death to the infidels!