The Phase I effort will provide a significant step toward the goal of developing a tactical HUMINT interview translator that will enable real time interrogation of captured combatants and prevent the loss of perishable tactical information. To achieve this, we will identify key interrogation scenarios in cooperation with the Army, analyze the linguistic and domain content of these scenarios, and develop within the first three months an initial expectation-based, speaker-independent two-way translation prototype using the content of the selected interrogation scenarios. This rapid prototyping effort is made possible using LSI's existing spoken translation software, and is based on our extensive experience in conversational dialogue development, as well as our background in military intelligence. The second half of the Phase I effort will focus on the development of the linguistic knowledge bases for the initial spontaneous dialogue prototype, evaluating the computational linguistic design of LSI's advanced engine, and finally, providing an initial demonstration of the prototype for handling spontaneous dialogues/conversations using this engine. Thus, at Phase I completion, we will have designed, developed, and demonstrated an initial capability for a tactical HUMINT interview translator, which will allow us to "jump start" the Phase II development during the Phase I Option period. There are numerous commercial uses for this technology in law enforcement, fire/paramedic, and critical incident response operations. Language Systems Inc. (LSI) is especially interested in these areas, since the organizations involved are current clients for our PC Windows-based two-way voice-to-voice translation systems. (See our web site at www.lsi.com). In addition, there are broader markets of retail financial services, multinational business operations, tourism and many others
