Anyone ever heard or seen such a thing?

[Postman]

"They did not speak Arabic but had a machine on which they would type words and then a voice would say them in Arabic. I had never seen such a thing before."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/17/wiraq17.xml

[MisoWeaver]

1. Sure.

Those kind of translators have been around for years.

They sound like a machine though

[Ian David]

2. Results for electronic translators

Results for electronic translators
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,408. (0.11 seconds)


http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=electronic+translators&hl=en&lr=&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2006-17,GGGL:en&pwst=1&sa=X&oi=froogle&ct=title



http://images.google.com/images?q=electronic+translators&hl=en&lr=&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2006-17,GGGL:en&pwst=1&sa=N&tab=fi


ECTACO Partner EA800 - English <-> Arabic Talking Electronic Dictionary and Audio PhraseBook




The ECTACO Partner Dictionary and Travel Audio PhraseBook EA800 is the most popular and powerful bilingual travel companion available. With its sleek modern design, hi-res colour touch-screen and state-of-the-art language tools, it is truly in a class of its own. The exhaustive vocabulary features an extensive dictionary with more than 670,000 entries. Yet the most remarkable feature of this sophisticated handheld is the inclusion of the most advanced voice facilities in the world.

Price: £299.95

More:
http://www.ectaco.co.uk/ECTACO-Partner-EA800/

[Buzz Clik]

3. "Do not be afraid. We come in peace"

[Clark2008]

5. Heh - when the aliens blew up Congress, everyone in the movie

theater I was in cheered.

:)

[karlrschneider]

4. I have one that translates into Spanish & speaks the word,

it's at least 10 years old, I imagine the technology has improved significantly since I got it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Not surprising someone in Iraq hadn't seen one before

After all, they were under an embargo from 1990 onwards.

[HuffleClaw]

7. erm, babel fish ???

this is hardly new tech.

[Igel]

8. They were issued a couple years ago.

A way to make sure that the grunts could have some means of communicating their intents/wishes to monolingual Arab-speakers without having to memorize the phrases. The emphatics are a pain in Arabic.

IIRC, they having a limited menu of phrases; it's not like you could type in just anything. "Hey, mamma, that's a really happening hijab you're sportin'" would produce nothing.