Phraselator

The Phraselator is a weatherproof handheld language translation device developed by VoxTec, a former division of the military contractor Marine Acoustics, located in Annapolis, MD.

The Phraselator is a small speech translation PDA-sized device designed to aid in interpretation. The device does not produce synthesized speech like that utilized by Stephen Hawking; instead, it plays pre-recorded foreign language MP3 files. Users can select the phrase they wish to convey from an English list on the screen or speak into the device. It then uses speech recognition technology called DynaSpeak, developed by SRI International, to play the proper sound file. The accuracy of the speech recognition software is over 70 percent according to software developer Jack Buchanan. The device can also record replies for translation later.

Pre-recorded phrases are stored on Secure Digital flash memory cards. A 128 MB card can hold up to 12,000 phrases in 4 or 5 languages. Users can download phrase modules from the official website, which contained over 300,000 phrases as of March 2005. Users can also construct their own custom phrase modules.

Earlier devices were known to have run on an SA-1110 Strong Arm 206 MHz CPU with 32MB SDRAM and 32MB onboard Flash RAM.

A newer model, the P2, was released in 2004 and developed according to feedback from U.S. soldiers. It translates one way from English to approximately 60 other languages. It has a directional microphone, a larger library of phrases and a longer battery life. The 2004 release was created by and utilizes a computer board manufactured by InHand Electronics, Inc.

In the future, the device will be able to display pictures so users can ask questions such as "Have you seen this person?"

Developer Ace Sarich notes that the device is inferior to human interpreter. Conclusions derived from a Nepal field test conducted by U.S. and Nepal based NGO Himalayan Aid in 2004 seemed to confirm Sarich's comparisons:

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