LANGUAGE LESS FOREIGN
A STRONGER CONNECTION
A Soldier and a role-player standing in for an Arabic-speaking local test MFLTS two- way speech translation app at the Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment (AEWE) 2016 at Fort Benning, Georgia. AEWE is the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command’s live, prototype experimentation campaign.
FROM TEXT TO TEXT With the MFLTS text
translation app,
Soldiers can translate text-based media, such as webpages and posts on Twitter and other social media. Like the speech app’s machine-translation engines, the text-to-text engine is trained on a large body of language data.
Text translation is typically quick and
highly accurate. Because it does not have to recognize speech, which can vary a lot between individuals, or synthesize it, there are fewer sources of errors in the final translation.
CONCLUSION For many Soldiers, the MFLTS speech app may be the best alternative to a human linguist, especially if there isn’t one around. Te Army’s MFLTS pro- gram intends to leverage major advances in language translation technology and machine learning to provide a cost- effective capability that will enable Soldiers to break through the language barriers that the expeditionary Army will continue to encounter.
MFLTS has been in service since Decem- ber 2016, when it was first fielded on the smartphone-like Nett Warrior devices
86 Army AL&T Magazine
used by the 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division. Te system is also being used in support of Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq.
Based on a 2017 congressional increase in research, development, testing and evaluation funding for the Army MFLTS program,
the MFLTS Product Office
anticipates adding several languages to the portfolio, potentially to include Russian, Dari, Urdu, Farsi and Korean, within the next 12 to 18 months. Te product office is assigned to the Project Manager for Distributed
Defense Acquisition University’s Program Manager’s Course. He has been a member of the Army Acquisition Corps since 2004.
DR. CHRISTINA BATES provides con- tract support to various organizations within the Army acquisition and research, development and engineering communities as a strategic analyst, planner and strate- gic communications expert. Bates holds a Ph.D. in communication with an empha- sis on organizational communication and behavior from Arizona State University; a J.D.
from Boston University; an M.S. Common
Ground System – Army in the Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Elec- tronic Warfare and Sensors.
For more information about the MFLTS program, go to
https://peoiews.army.mil/ dcgsa.
MR. MICHAEL DONEY is the product director for MFLTS at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in engineering management from George Washington University and a B.S. in civil engineering from Virginia Tech. He is Level III certified in program management and in engineering and is a 2014 graduate of
in mass communication, with distinction, from Boston University; and a B.A., cum laude, in sociology and communication from Boston College. She is a Lean Six Sigma master black belt.
MR. TRACY BLOCKER is the MFLTS product office representative to the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. He holds a B.A. in English from Georgia Southern University and is a graduate of the Post- graduate Intelligence Program of the Joint Military Intelligence College (now the National Intelligence University). He is a retired Army military intelligence officer who served in tactical and operational units.
October-December 2017
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