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Star Trek-like 'Phraselator' Helps Police
coondoggie writes "Yet another Star Trek-like device is making its way into the real world. VoxTec's Phraselator name sounds a bit like something the Three Stooges might have used long ago but no, this PDA-like device was developed through Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for use in Afghanistan and Iraq by American soldiers for communicating with locals who spoke Farsi, Dari, Pashto and other languages. It is now being used as one tool to help keep the peace between English and non-English speakers by police departments in California, Florida, Nevada. In a nutshell the $2,500 ruggedized Phraselator runs an Intel PXA255 400mHz processor that supports a built-In noise canceling microphone, a VOCON 3200 Speech Recognizer, 1GB removable SD card, 256MB of DRAM Memory and 64MB Flash Memory. It can store up to 10,000 phrases."
"I thought she was asking for sex, turns out she just wanted directions to the 7-11. Oopsies!"
Sure baby, I'll give you my phone number...in Hex
Citizen: Someone's planted a bomb in there!
Phraselator: "Somebody set up us the bomb."
Soldier: What you say!!
Now the police can safely ignore the Spanish equivalent of "Don't tase me, bro"!
Funny, it reminds me of an elevator conversation joke in our native tongue (Tagalog).
:D
The scenario is that a foreigner (english) and a native was taking a ride down the elevator and it stopped halfway down, the door opened and the native outside the elevator asked if it is going down. The native inside said Yes it is going down. The conversation goes like this...
Native Outside Elevator: Bababa ba?
Native Inside Elevator: Bababa.
*Both natives understood each other*
The root word is "Baba" meaning "down" or "under".
Doubling the first syllable "Bababa" would mean continuing action as in "going down"
Adding a word "ba" after an action denotes a question (like adding "ka" at the end in Japanese)
So "Bababa ba?" means "Is this going down? (elevator)" to which the answer is an affirmative "Bababa." meaning "Yes it is going down."
"Ba" is pronounced like the "ba" in "bat"
The foreigner then asked if the natives just had a conversation
How would this device fare against such scenarios. I dunno. There are so many possibilities when it comes to languages...
Or better yet, they could just use a simple, inexpensive megaphone. Because everyone knows that if you just speak LOUDER and LOUDER, eventually you will reach a volume where the non-English-speaking person will finally understand you!
My truck is like a series of tubes.
DON'T PHRASE ME BRO!
Jenny's got a new number! 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
we have one in my platoon. did we use it at all in the 15 months we were in iraq? nope! why? interpreters work better and stop bullets.
Translation of "AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH" from other common languages:
Russian: "You are correct, I should not have been reading that book, comrade."
German: "I apologize for being too Jewish, and will now board the crowded yet impressively prompt train."
Canadian: "Oh darn. Iced the puck again."
Japanese: "I believe the voice actress for my favorite anime is making an appearance nearby."
French: "My cheese!" or "You appear to be trying to add a non-French word to the French language", depending on context.
American: "It appears my Tivo did not record this week's episode of Lost."
Mandarin: "Hello."
"Australian": "Crikey, look at the size of that stingra--"
Jamaican: (nobody has ever heard this phrase from a Jamaican)
Anybody left I didn't offend?
You must have gone through a lot of interpreters.
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