BBN Technologies Awarded $5.67 Million in Defense Funding to Automate Translation of Foreign Documents

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BBN Technologies, an advanced technology solutions firm, announced today it has been awarded $5.67 million in funding by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under the Multilingual Automatic Document Classification, Analysis and Translation (Madcat) program. The contract includes options that could bring the total value to nearly $30 million.

“This is one of the most exciting but challenging research areas, but the potential benefit is clearly huge.”

The goal of the Madcat program is to create a prototype system that quickly provides relevant, distilled, actionable information to military commands and personnel by converting foreign language text images into English transcripts automatically (without the use of linguists and analysts) and with high accuracy.

Tad Elmer, president and CEO, BBN Technologies, said, "This is one of the most exciting but challenging research areas, but the potential benefit is clearly huge."

Under the contract, BBN will create a prototype system that can be deployed on handheld devices as well as laptops and traditional desktop computers, and transcribes foreign documents into English. The system will support multiple document types — both printed and handwritten — including, hard copy, PDF files, photographs, newsprint, and signs. To accomplish this, BBN will integrate optical character recognition with its state-of-the-art translation and distillation techniques and will develop novel methods for processing handwritten text. The system will enable English-speaking military personnel and analysts to extract valuable information from a much larger number of foreign language documents than is now possible, facilitate rapid responses to emerging threats, and increase situational awareness.

About BBN Technologies

BBN Technologies solves real problems through the creation and disciplined application of advanced technology. With expertise spanning information security, speech and language processing, networking, distributed systems, and sensing and control systems, BBN scientists and engineers have amassed a substantial collection of innovations and patented solutions. Today, BBN is managing the planning and design of GENI, an advanced network facility spanning the United States; is saving lives in Iraq and Afghanistan with its Boomerang Shooter Detection System; operates the first metro quantum cryptography network; has deployed the first real-time foreign broadcast monitoring system; and is proving the benefits of the world's first stereoscopic digital mammography system in clinical trials. For more information, visit www.bbn.com.