While VoxTec continued to improve the device, the military began testing a device made by a California company, Integrated Wave Technologies Inc. It had developed a similar hands-free version of a translation machine that fit into an ammunition pouch, allowing soldiers to say key phrases that are then turned into full Arabic sentences. “You say ‘house search’ and then it will say in Arabic: ‘We’re here to search your house. Please stay in this room. Do you have any weapons?’ ” said Tim McCune, the company’s president.

Neither product, however, proved robust enough to replace human interpreters. What soldiers really needed, the military decided, was to have a conversation with the people they encounter, not just give orders. “During door-to-door searches, the soldiers need to be able to calm the people down and reassure them,’’ said Wayne Richards, branch chief for technology implementation at US Joint Forces Command.

So the Pentagon turned to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to enlist some technology powerhouses, setting aside $20.8 million this year for translation technologies. Military officials said they do not expect the automated devices to replace human interpreters but to augment them. DARPA was a natural fit to lead the project because it has spent the past two years creating a database of thousands of hours of Iraqi conversations to study the voices, speech patterns and commonly used phrases to help with speech-recognition software.

The agency selected SRI International, a nonprofit research group, IBM Corp., and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to help put that database to work. Each of the three has developed systems that use mathematical algorithms to interpret speech, even if it is slurred, accented or muffled, into Arabic and the Arabic response into English. After a second or two, a synthesised male voice produces a response. The systems usually require speakers to limit their conversations to one sentence at a time to avoid confusion.

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