IraqComm: A Next Generation Translation System

Citation

Precoda, K., Zheng, J., Vergyri, D., Franco, H., Richey, C., Kathol, A., & Kajarekar, S. S. (2007). Iraqcomm: a next generation translation system. In INTERSPEECH (pp. 2841-2844).

Abstract

This paper describes the IraqComm translation system developed by SRI International, with components from Language Weaver, Inc., and Cepstral, LLC. IraqComm, supported by the DARPA Translation Systems for Tactical Use (TRANSTAC) program, mediates and translates spontaneous conversations between an English speaker and a speaker of colloquial Iraqi Arabic. It is trained to handle topics of tactical importance, including force protection, checkpoint operations, civil affairs, basic medical interviews, and training. Major components of the system include SRI’s DynaSpeak speech recognizer, Gemini, SRInterp, and Language Weaver translation engines, Cepstral’s Swift speech synthesis engine, and the user interface. The system runs on standard Windows computers and can be used in a variety of modes, including an eyes-free, nearly hands-free mode.


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