BOLT is an international research initiative to develop breakthrough language translation technologies. Expanded global access to diverse means of communication results in more information being produced in more languages more quickly than ever before.

Last month we reported that SRI International had been awarded a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) $7.1 million contract under the agency’s Broad Operational Language Translation (BOLT) program. Now we’d like to share with you some further information on the BOLT initiative.

In October 2011, DARPA launched the BOLT program to attempt to create new techniques for automated language translation (machine translation) and linguistic analysis that can be applied to the informal genres of text and speech common in online and in-person communication.

BOLT is aimed at enabling communication with non-English-speaking populations and identifying important information in foreign-language sources by:

1) allowing English-speakers to understand foreign-language sources of all genres, including chat, messaging and informal conversation;

2) providing English-speakers the ability to quickly identify targeted information in foreign-language sources using natural-language queries;

3) enabling multi-turn communication in text and speech with non-English speakers. If successful, BOLT will deliver all capabilities free from domain or genre limitations.

Future phases of BOLT will include research into new techniques to enable computers to carry on multi-modal dialogues with humans, comprehend concepts, and generate responses in multilingual environments.

While in that position, he occasionally interpreted for presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton. Obst retired from the federal government in March of 1997. He served as director and principal instructor of the former Inlingua School of Interpretation in Arlington, Virginia from 1997 to 2004 and has been writing and lecturing in retirement.

Harry Obst is author of the book “White House Interpreter: The Art of Interpretation.” As reported he will be one of the keynote speakers at the upcoming Michigan Translators/Interpreters Network third regional conference on interpreting and translation, on October 13, 2012 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Novi, MI.