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ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO
February 17, 2005
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Radio transcript
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
About 100 US soldiers and Marines serving in Iraq will soon
be using a new tool intended to help keep them safe and
make their jobs easier. It's Iraqi-style Arabic. As NPR's
Ina Jaffe reports, the troops will learn the language by
playing a new video game.
INA JAFFE reporting:
Sergeant John Smith is on a mission in central Iraq.
Mr. LEWIS JOHNSON (University of Southern California Information
Sciences Institute): (As Sgt. John Smith) What I'm going
to do is I'm going to walk into a district and find who
is the local headman...
JAFFE: That's Lewis Johnson playing Sergeant Smith, a virtual
character in the video game he's created at the Information
Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California
. He calls it "Tactical Iraqi," and his Sergeant
Smith is a leader of three American soldiers pictured on
the screen in front of him.
Mr. JOHNSON: (As Sgt. Smith) So there are a bunch of people
sitting in this cafe here. We'll go in and see if there's
someone here who'll be willing to talk with us.
(Foreign language spoken)
Unidentified Character #1: (Foreign language spoken)
JAFFE: Give an understandable greeting, and the Iraqi characters
on screen will respond in kind. But the interactions in
this game become progressively more complicated. And when
the right words aren't said and the right gestures and courtesies
are omitted, things can go terribly wrong.
Mr. JOHNSON: (As Sgt. Smith) OK, I'm going to enter the town
of Wadia (ph) in the typical ugly American manner of doing
it, which is basically, `Get to the point.'
JAFFE: Using the mouse and keyboard, Johnson makes the soldiers
run toward the cafe instead of walk. They don't remove their
helmets before the speak. Sgt. Smith fails to introduce
his team members to the Iraqis at the cafe, and they don't
like it.
Unidentified Character #2: (Foreign language spoken)
Mr. JOHNSON: (As Sgt. Smith) They say, `Well, who are you
guys?' `Well, we're Americans.' (Foreign language spoken)
Unidentified Character #2: (Foreign language spoken)
Mr. JOHNSON: (As Sgt. Smith) So he's accusing us of being
CIA spies now.
JAFFE: This program is build on the well-known video game "Unreal
Tournament," but the addition of voice recognition
and artificial intelligence software enables the Iraqi characters
to respond in ways that simulate something like a real conversation.
Lewis Johnson says it's not different in intent from any
crash course in a foreign language, but what he calls game
play holds a student's attention better.
Mr. JOHNSON: The user is sort of engaged continually in an
activity where one action leads to a response, which leads
to another action, so that by the time you're -- reached
an experience level, you really hopefully feel confident
that when you actually get to the real world, that you'll
be able to do this.
JAFFE: The video game has been funded with more than $7 million
from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.
Ralph Chatham, the program manager, believes that in today's
military, foreign languages should not be the exclusive
province of a handful of linguists.
Mr. RALPH CHATHAM (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency):
So I challenge the research community to find a way to put
into the brain, behind every steering wheel and behind every
trigger finger, in a foreign country a little bit of that
culture and gestures and a tactical, useful vocabulary.
Sergeant AMY PERKINS (Arabic Linguist): Oh, it's wonderful.
I see great future for it.
JAFFE: Sergeant Amy Perkins is an Arabic linguist at Ft. Carson
in Colorado. She tried an early version of the game, and
it's an improvement, she says, over the way she's had to
teach Arabic to the troops in the past.
Sgt. PERKINS: Anything from classroom environment with three
weeks to go to, 'These guys are going out on a raid in about
15 minutes. Teach them enough Arabic to find out where the
weapons are.'
JAFFE: She's now going to be overseeing a test run of the
language video game for Ft. Carson soldiers who will soon
be shipping out to Iraq.
Sgt. PERKINS: Most of our tankers, most of the cab scouts
-- these guys, they're not going to be sitting in a class
learning Arabic. They've got other jobs that they have to
do. And this is a computer game. And, well, all soldiers
like computer games (laughs)
JAFFE: Soldiers from Ft. Polk, Louisiana, and Marines at Quantico,
Virginia, will also be trying the game. Meanwhile, USC's
Lewis Johnson hopes to spin this project off into a private
company that will create language programs for both military
and civilian uses; that's presuming the technique works,
which he won't know for sure till this first group of students
comes home from the war. Ina Jaffe, NPR News, Los Angeles
.
BLOCK: To watch a demonstration of how the game is played,
go to our Web site, npr.org.
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Copyright 2005. National Public Radio
All Rights Reserved. National Public Radio
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