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"A Virtual Course in Iraqi Arabic"
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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