Multilingual Automatic Translation Engine for Signs (MATES)

When the United States military commits to operations in foreign territories, it is important for soldiers to have the ability to understand textual information they encounter accurately and in a timely manner. Traditionally, translation has been done either by trained professionals, or ideally by native speakers of the target language who are fluent in English as well. However, in many cases, obtaining access to such resources can be time consuming, expensive, or simply impractical. The military requires a “first response” translation capability which allows them to make an informed decision about expert intervention.

For this project Applied Media Analysis, Inc. is developing a document and sign translation system MATEs(Multilingual Automatic Translation Engine) that can be operated by novice users to obtain and interpret documents and signs written in foreign languages. The system will be comprised of a camera-enabled mobile device (PDA or smart phones) and software developed for text detection, recognition and translation, and a configuration and visualization interface to aid personnel deployed in foreign countries. We currently have capabilities in Chinese, Arabic and English.