BBN Wins $13 Million More for Translation Research

Back in December, Cambridge, MA-based BBN picked up $5.67 million from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop mobile-device software that will translate printed foreign-language documents into English. Now the company’s general R&D efforts on automated language translation are getting another boost from DARPA. BBN has won a $13 million grant through DARPA’s Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE) program to work on speech and text transcription, the company announced today. BBN merited the award by meeting or exceeding goals for automatic translation of Arabic newswire text and broadcast news during the program’s first two years; GALE calls for awardees to reach 90 percent accuracy by the end of the five-year research program.

Author: Wade Roush

Between 2007 and 2014, I was a staff editor for Xconomy in Boston and San Francisco. Since 2008 I've been writing a weekly opinion/review column called VOX: The Voice of Xperience. (From 2008 to 2013 the column was known as World Wide Wade.) I've been writing about science and technology professionally since 1994. Before joining Xconomy in 2007, I was a staff member at MIT’s Technology Review from 2001 to 2006, serving as senior editor, San Francisco bureau chief, and executive editor of TechnologyReview.com. Before that, I was the Boston bureau reporter for Science, managing editor of supercomputing publications at NASA Ames Research Center, and Web editor at e-book pioneer NuvoMedia. I have a B.A. in the history of science from Harvard College and a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT. I've published articles in Science, Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Technology and Culture, Alaska Airlines Magazine, and World Business, and I've been a guest of NPR, CNN, CNBC, NECN, WGBH and the PBS NewsHour. I'm a frequent conference participant and enjoy opportunities to moderate panel discussions and on-stage chats. My personal site: waderoush.com My social media coordinates: Twitter: @wroush Facebook: facebook.com/wade.roush LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/waderoush Google+ : google.com/+WadeRoush YouTube: youtube.com/wroush1967 Flickr: flickr.com/photos/wroush/ Pinterest: pinterest.com/waderoush/