The Pentagon is hoping to improve language translation technology by pumping money into its Boundless Operational Language Translation service. BOLT is a universal language translation service expected to "enable communication regardless of medium (voice or text), and genre (conversation, chat, or messaging)."
Outlined in DARPA's 2012 budget request, the U.S. government hopes to put around $15 million at minimum into the program.
In contrast, Google is developing similar technology, with its voice/text translation and pronunciation tools that speak words with an appropriate inflection.
Although the technology seems to be somewhat akin to DARPA's vision of BOLT, Darpa claims that GoogleÂ’s version is somewhat amateurish, as the military version is billed as a much more powerful universal translator.
There there. Of course it is .... [Pat pat]