Snip from a report I filed for today's edition of the NPR News program Day to Day:
Part of the daily struggle for soldiers and Marines in Iraq is communicating with civilians and suspected insurgents. Few military personnel have enough fluency with Iraqi Arabic to be easily understood, and field translators are in short supply.
But technology may help close that communications gap. A hand-held voice translator device developed by Integrated Wave Technologies, already in use in other parts of the world, converts simple English commands into Iraqi Arabic or 15 other languages.
When the soldier says a simple phrase — for example, "keep kids back" — the Voice Response Translator (VRT) matches that command to a more complex phrase in Arabic. In this case: "Keep your children back from us or we will take action against you."
Integrated Wave Technologies President Tim McCune says simple communications like these can save lives, both among Iraqi civilians and military personnel. "This removes pulling the trigger as the first option in dealing with foreign nationals," he says.
Link to archived radio segment audio. Listen to sound files from translator devices currently being used by US troops in Iraq: Link. Learn useful Iraqi Arabic phrases, like, "there is no pork in this food" and "we have to detain you."
NPR "Xeni Tech" archives: Link, or subscribe to future episodes by RSS: Link.
Images: Integrated Wave Technologies © 2006. At top, An Army private shows how the Voice Response Translator (VRT) — the small gray box with black speaker — can be used with a megaphone to address large groups in the field. Below, a closer look at the VRT.
