Navy Unveils Polyglot Chat For Iraq 306
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.'"
Finally! (Score:4, Funny)
Simon
Ah, English (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed. I can't tell you how many fights erupt when a Brit asks a Yank for a cigarette.
Re:Ah, English (Score:5, Funny)
"Fancy a fag, mate?"
Re:Ah, English (Score:5, Funny)
Brit: Pack of fags?
Randall: You're a fag.
Brit: It's a cigarette, mate.
Randall: I'm not your mate, fag!
Or has a tea-break (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Snipe-hunt? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Snipe-hunt? (Score:2)
Re:couldn't resist... (Score:2)
Re:couldn't resist... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Finally! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Finally! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Finally! (Score:3, Funny)
Translator: You have big American penis. Can you hand myself and my troopers some guns so we might be able to fight alongside your battalion of big American penises?
American soldier: Uh.. sure, yeah. *Looks down, smiles*
Re:Finally! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Finally! (Score:3, Funny)
Oh.. wait. Never mind.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Joke as you will, but we shot down more British soldiers due to stupid screw ups than were shot by Iraqis. Maybe instead of translators, we should be writing control systems for our automated missile defense systems that don't suck, and putting someone a little more responsible and trained than 18 year old dropouts at the controls. In at least one incident, it was because Patriot missile batteries kept identifying helicopters and planes as inbound missiles. If the operator doesn't stop it after about 10 seconds, the battery fires a missile by itself. 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.
It's pretty fucking embarrassing that our troops and their computer systems can't tell the difference between a helicopter and a missile traveling at nearly the speed of sound, and that a system which was routinely proven to have unacceptable friendly-fire targeting problems was deployed so heavily(and when problems surfaced as expected, to meet a threat that didn't exist, the systems were not shut off). As always, technology is being hauled in to solve a problem other technology and sheer incompetence created.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:Finally! (Score:2)
There aren't significant numbers of anyone other than US, UK, Aussies and Poles over there anyway, and the Poles probably speak the best English of the four, so what's the point?
(OK - I know Aznar has sent a couple of dozen troops, and there are maybe a few Italians knocking about, but 'coalition'? Jeez...)
Re:Finally! (Score:2)
s/or$/our/g
s/^old$/olde/g;
Machine translation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Machine translation? (Score:5, Funny)
An anonymous reader writes "in accordance with of ScienceBlog, the office of the research of the blue marine and the tests, of the roast meat in the United States the friendly armies in Iraq of the disturbance that to maintain those cause smithereens, to the application software locally those the communication (IM) immediately with a machine translation (M.Ue.), to attention. The result: One automatically translates of Plaudern in Iraq the software, those his publicity in the correct language of the reader, the city of Koalition-Schwaetzchen-Linie - ' it receives from Raveberichte of the United States and the coalition of the alliance of the personnel '
Mmmmmmm.... Roast meat!
Re:Machine translation? (Score:5, Funny)
Polish soldier 1: "What is he writing?"
Polish soldier 2: "He asks if we can prop him up, they are covered with a piece of marmelade"
Re:Machine translation? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Machine translation? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Machine translation? (Score:5, Funny)
However, I'd be impressed by the developers if they resisted the temptation to throw in "easter eggs" at one-in-a-million intervals. "please designate 8 of your troops for west bunker guard tonight" --> "your mother is as ugly as five camels and weighs more"
Re:Machine translation? (Score:2)
Re:Machine translation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Machine translation? (Score:2)
It is an awesome idea though, I would give Kudos to whichever company succesfully impliments it. I have tried BabbleFish [babblefish.com] and Free Translation [freetranslation.com], and they do an ok job for the most part, but for something as precise and advanced as war, I think it would be hard to do.
Also this transmission would be being transmitted wirelessly, and would be subject to eavesdroping, so it's encryption will have t
Microsoft patent??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft patent??? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Microsoft patent??? (Score:2)
So the enemy can locate them (Score:2, Funny)
Re:So the enemy can locate them (Score:3, Funny)
Language technology... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Language technology... (Score:3, Insightful)
I expect it is actually a lot worse than most people think. Yes, in specialised areas where you can use lookup tables it can work pretty well. But that's hardly suprising is it?
For general texts it sucks bigtime.
Re:Language technology... (Score:3, Interesting)
I took a look at the Natural Language Toolkit [sourceforge.net] for Python, which focuses primarily on statistical language processing. For example, given a tagged training copora, you can build conditional frequency distributions that say "natural language" is usually followed by "processing."
I've wondered if this is easier or harder in a more heavily inflected language like Latin or Russian. I would think a brute force approach would be complicated by the variety of endings, but that
Re:Language technology... (Score:3, Funny)
Now if only.... (Score:2, Insightful)
chat you say? (Score:5, Funny)
This is why the Iraqi citizens dislike Americans (Score:5, Funny)
What they hear: "All your base are belong to us!".
Maybe now... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Maybe now... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Maybe now... (Score:2)
The correct language... (Score:4, Funny)
Iraq doubleplusgood / Iraqpersons secure / foodwater supplies up 82% / Kerry verging crimethink / oldthinkers unbellyfeel Bush / think in Bushspeak.
I can guess where this will go... (Score:2, Funny)
Wir haben es nicht gewust --> Wine is not a sausage.
Wie wis joe a melly klistmas --> We whish you a Merry Christmas.
No offence meant.
what? (Score:5, Funny)
US: our base is protected
translate
UK : Your Base is under control
translate
Pol : Your Base Is Inside our control
translate
Jap: All Your Base Are Belong To Us
translate
Iraq : Well No Sh!t sherlock.
END TRANSMISSION
Automatic translation? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Automatic translation? (Score:2)
Re:Automatic translation? (Score:2)
FM;CFF:R;CORD:FZ30948265:TYPE:PERS/INF;
FM;FIRE;AA0001;
FM;CFF:U;-100M;
FM;FIRE;AA0001;
Or some such. It's been a while since I did ARTY control software; computer message syntax is from memory, and has probably changed.
Respecting cultural mores (Score:2, Funny)
Just teach everybody the Aggressor Language. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Just teach everybody the Aggressor Language. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just teach everybody the Aggressor Language. (Score:3, Insightful)
If that were true it might actually be easier to learn, at least for those speaking any language of European origin. In fact, there is a lot of Germanic and Slavic in there as well, but most of it is so unpredictably distorted it's hard to recognize. In addition, many frequent words as well as the grammatical structure are entirely contrived and bear no relation to any natural language.
For a more naturalistic
Re:Just teach everybody the Aggressor Language. (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? To anyone? I suspect that non-Western language speakers, like virtually anyone in Asia, might disagree. As well as those with rather esoteric languages like Hungarian.
And as for those who speak languages that are similar to Esperanto (namely any Germanic or Romantic derived language) could learn any given langugage "in just a month or two, to a level allowing excellent communications".
doesn't help face to face
Which is why we have personal translators for that situation, which do exist and do work. You can even get them for civilian use.
Esperanto was dead before it was even born. It doesn't evolve with any civilization and so lacks terminology that comes into usage over time. And, heck, if we want to pick a popular "neutral" language, then Klingon beats Esperanto for number of speakers. Yes. It is that silly.
Re:Just teach everybody the Aggressor Language. (Score:2)
Finally! (Score:3, Funny)
translating is nice but what about spell checking? (Score:2)
Re:translating is nice but what about spell checki (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't like spell checkers. They catch all the trivial mistakes that you mostly just read over anyway, give you a nice feeling that the text is okay, but then they leave the really grave, embarrassing mistakes in. Most spell checkers should more accurately be called typo checkers. I English, they're able to also analyse grammar a little, beause it isn't all too complicated, but firstly this is absolutely not an o
sample babelfish translations (Score:4, Interesting)
"Our troops will be to your left doing field exercises for 24 to 48 hours, please disregard hostile sounding noises during that time"
english to japanese, then japanese to english:
"As for our troops there is a noise of sound of the enemy between that you ignore on your left which does 48 hour field exercises from 24"
english to korean, then korean to english:
"Our unit in 24 48 hours in your left which does a hazard field exercise, the sound which will be hostile during that hour which disregards me will connect a sound arresting"
pray for our troops
Re:sample babelfish translations (Score:2)
Re:sample babelfish translations (Score:2)
Re:sample babelfish translations (Score:2)
2) It's the modern day version of a fictional game in a Phillip K. Dick story. (Sorry, don't remember which one. I just remember that The Sun Also Rises was used as an example.)
Re:sample babelfish translations (Score:3, Insightful)
If your critique was regarding superficial, stylistic issues of the language generated, it would be justified. However, if what you get back does not make any sense whatsoever, it is reasonable to assume that the intermediary version in the 'other' language doesn't make any sense either, and that the translator is absolutely worthless. Thus it is reasonable to pe
Re:sample babelfish translations (Score:2)
Re:sample babelfish translations (Score:2)
No, they just show how crummy computer translations are. If you used did a similar test with human translators, you would get a similar text back most of the time. With good human tranlators, little if any meaning would be lost.
Don't call the test useless just because computers do so badly at it. It shows how difficult translation is.
Re:sample babelfish translations (Score:4, Informative)
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"
Yikes! (Score:5, Insightful)
So how do you get soldiers and commanders speaking different languages in a theater of war to communicate effectively and not, for example, blow each other up mistakenly?
I think there is a simple answer to that question - use human translators! I would never trust a machine translation with my life.
I speak a second language to reasonably high standard, and so I realise that languages can be really subtle things. Sometimes things just don't translate directly, and they need interpretation e.g.
Non-English speaking soldier How's the new weapon system working?
US soldier It's hot! Damn hot!
Non-English speaking soldier Oh dear! It shouldn't be hot! You must stop using it immediately!
US soldier No I mean it rocks!
Non-English speaking soldier It's fastenings are insecure? Sounds like we should send an engineer immediately! Please cease using it!
Re:Yikes! (Score:2)
Re:Yikes! (Score:5, Insightful)
But the problem isn't just slang.
I have taught languages, and one of the things that you realise is that people that don't speak a second language actually have a hard time analysing languages and realising what is colloquial, for instance, or when a sentence is simple for a foreign language speaker and when it isn't.
So many English speakers will think a sentence like "we've been set up" is very simple, because it uses little words, whereas many who have English as a second language would find it difficult to understand. ("Set up" is a phrasal verb, the "up" completely changes the meaning of the verb "set").
Re:Yikes! (Score:2)
Actually we don't speak in words, (Score:3, Insightful)
We happen to use words to express the memes but we don't think in words.
Regardless, its the old: "I know you think you understand what you heard but I don't believe that you understand that what I said was not what I meant."
Re:Yikes! (Score:2)
Exactly. "We have been set up" could mean "We have support" or it could mean "we have been tricked" - two completely different things. How is a fricking machine going to understand which is the right meaning if it doesn't understand the context of what's happening? In a life and death situation, would you want a machine translating if it can't even understand the meaning of a simple sentence like "We have been set up"?
Re:Yikes! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yikes! (Score:3, Informative)
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 [14cav.org] in a WW3 scenario, and then
And to make the troops better communicators... (Score:2)
"To take thanks care of this goal, which we did not determine." was actually "Thank you for taking care of that target that we failed to notice."
Wait until you see the transcripts of their off duty exploits...
-Adam
Ah yes... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, due to a contracting snafu, the codebase centers largely around Microsoft Bob, dubbed by the same users as "Ms. Bob"
The premise of the software operates on the belief that there are only certain phrases that troops will need to share. For example, an Iraqi and Canadian can collaborate effortlessly on a word processing document, but "Don't shoot them, they're friendly" requires additional modules be
the last starfighter (Score:2)
so what does this mean? well, if this is a precursor to said technology, it must be good.
wow...what a good movie. i think i'll go rent it tonight....
You can do this, too (Score:5, Interesting)
http://jkent.dfw.ibm.com/ebia/doc/LTSS.html
Irony at it's finest... (Score:5, Interesting)
tower of babel (Score:2)
There we go. Full circle. ^_-
MT won't impress me until... (Score:2)
DUDE, I WROTE THAT! (Score:2)
Re:DUDE, I WROTE THAT! (Score:2)
Overheard (Score:4, Funny)
Soldier: Sorry?
Iraqi I will not buy this record, it is scratched.
Soldier: Uh, no, no, no. This is a patrol.
Iraqi: Ah! I will not buy this *patrol*, it is scratched.
Soldier: No, no, no, no. Patrol...um...military (holds up his rifle).
Iraqi: Ya! Mil-teh-ree! Ya! Uh...My hovercraft is full of eels.
Soldier: Sorry?
Iraqi: My hovercraft (pantomimes hefting a rifle)...is full of eels
Soldier: Ahh, insurgents!
Iraqi: Ya! Ya! Ya! Ya! Do you waaaaant...do you waaaaaant...to come back to my place, bouncy bouncy?
Soldier: Here, I don't think you're using that thing right.
Iraqi: You great poof.
Soldier: Look, just move along please.
Iraqi: If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me? I...I am no longer infected.
Soldier: Uh, may I, uh...(takes notebook computer, types in a phrase)...Costs six and six...ah, here we are. (speaks weird Iraqi-sounding words)
Iraqi punches the soldier.
Someone set up us the bomb (Score:3, Insightful)
Language tools in use (Score:3, Funny)
Hello. I am in Iraq. My Grid Coordinates are XY76543421, and I think that I may shoot at some guy that is pissing on the only tree out here.
In German:
Hallo. Ich bin im Irak. Meine Koordinaten des Rasterfeldes sind XY76543421, und ich denke, daB ich in irgendeine Einzelperson dieses pissing im einzigen Baum in Richtung zu drauBen werfen kann hier.
Into French:
Hallo. Je suis en Iraq. Mes coordonnees du champ de trame sont XY76543421, et moi-meme pensent que je peux jeter celui-ci dans un particulier pissing dans le seul arbre en direction dehors ici.
Back into English:
Hallo. I am in Iraq. My co-ordinates of the field of screen are XY76543421, and myself think that I can throw this one in a private individual pissing in the only steering shaft outside here.
Meaning: WTF?
Ok, 500 babelfish jokes coming up but.. (Score:2)
"Ali Baba at 9 o!"
"Ali Kuchen bei 9 o!"
"Ali cake with 9 o!"
I hope the US mil. has a beter babelfish...
"/Dread"
Even better! (Score:2)
Your hovercraft (Score:3, Funny)
Canadian Peacekeepers (Score:5, Insightful)
Communications gone wrong (Score:2)
Received: Send three and four pence, we're going to a dance
Sent: We need to be supplied with a palette of 70 survivalist kits
Received: We need to be supplied with a palette of 70's revivalist kits
Babelfish (Score:2)
LS
Top 10 reasons... (Score:2, Funny)
#10 Some of our Middle Eastern allies will become
offended by always being greeted with the
message, "Are you female?"
#9 Enemy troops will always know our location
simply by logging on as "1337BustyBlonde" and
typing "a/s/l"
#8 "Dood, ph33r my m4d fr@gg1ng ski11z" doesn't
have the same ring as "Mess with the best, die
like the rest."
#7 Along those same lines, "All your base are
belong to us" does not have the same ring
as "Veni, Vidi, Vici"
#6 Spammers will be responsable for one of t
A reminder for our military in chat rooms... (Score:5, Funny)
Well ... I can prefer IM rather than EMail... (Score:2)
Of course I'd want it over a secure VPN too. No sense in letting the other guy pause the action while he reloads.
Could help with civilians too. (Score:2, Interesting)
The interviewee used to do translation for the US army, but after an incident he is now being sought as a member of the former Iraqi army. Despite this, he still has less trouble going through checkpoints simply because he can explain his business in Eng
IM on the front lines (Score:4, Informative)
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
Re:I speak english (or something similar) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I speak english (or something similar) (Score:3, Insightful)
nope.
For proof, get your ass out in say, the middle of china.
English *is* the most popular... (Score:3, Informative)
It is very common in my experience to hear non-native English speakers conversing in English when in another non-English speaking c
BABELFISH (Score:2)
English-Spanish-English
Put the weapon down and you walk far. Immediately put its hands behind its head and put the Earth face down. Its life is in the risk if you it is not satisfied.
English-Japanese-English
Put in place the gun, walk. Immediately, put your hand in the rear of your head, on the land put the surface. Your life is if you do not follow danger