April 6, 2011 05:28 pm EDT

DARPA BOLT initiative wants real-time spoken translation, Douglas Adams' ghost says it's about time

Thanks to online tools like Google Translate we're now able to communicate with people in nearly any language -- maybe not perfectly, but well enough to get the general idea across, and livened up by the occasional humorous mistranslation. Now DARPA wants that done wholesale and with military precision, launching the BOLT initiative. That stands for Boundless Operational Language Translation, and DARPA is giving interested parties until May 19th of this year to submit proposals for how they'll manage to achieve the department's lofty goals, which include written and spoken translation into English of "multiple languages." If you're thinking of competing you can find all the details at the source link, though curiously you won't find a single Vorgon dialect mentioned.

DARPA BOLT initiative wants real-time spoken translation, Douglas Adams' ghost says it's about time originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 13:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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