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Coalition Chat Room Debuts at Combined Endeavor 2003

Navy Newsstand

Story Number: NNS030522-02

Release Date: 5/22/2003 9:25:00 AM

By Capt. Chris Miller, Naval Reserve Naval Information Bureau 1118th, Fort Carson

LAGER AULENBACH, Germany (NNS) -- Imagine the ability to have instantaneous translations during the height of a crisis response operation with coalition partners while at sea? Or you're standing night watch, working side-by-side with Partnership for Peace (PfP) nations with limited English skills. How do you ensure your message is clearly understood?

U.S. Naval Forces, Europe (USNAVFOREUR) has been testing its Coalition Chat Room solution during Combined Endeavor 2003, or CE-03, May 8-22, at Lager Aulenbach, Germany. More than 35 nations including Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, France, Greece and many Partnership for Peace nations - Sweden, Norway, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia and Albania - agreed to participate in the chat room testing.

"CE-03 brings together communication experts from more than 37 nations," said Chris F. Hillenbrand, science adviser, USNAVFOREUR. "It's human interoperability at its finest."

In its ninth year, Combined Endeavor features planning, testing and documentation of nation's communications information systems and their equipment's interoperability capabilities. Any opportunity to test a new product or software is welcomed by its sponsor, U.S. European Command (EUCOM).

During a two day introductory indoctrination, Hillenbrand and his team visited each nation's tent and installed the software program on computers. Through the testing period, the Trans-lingual instant message technology will be evaluated on its effectiveness, suitability, usability and language proficiency in a tactical environment.

Hillenbrand says the long term goal is to have the Mitre developed, DoD-funded software as "off-the-shelf technology." The Office of Naval Research's (ONR) Naval Fleet Force Technology Innovation Office and the International Field Office have been instrumental in the development of the collaborative tool.

"This instantaneous translation capability will bring technology right into the hands of the warfighter," says Hillenbrand. "One of Rear Adm. Hart's goals is to have this battle group enabled." Hart is deputy commander, USNAVFOREUR.

The science advisor has been working the past three months with EUCOM and ONR to develop several CE-03 objectives. Specifically during the 17 day exercise, delegations will assess the viability of the chat room concept, determine if the text and content would be something the warfighter would use in a coalition environment and provide feedback on the accuracy of the translation and proper sentence structure.

The program currently has more than ten languages including Japanese, Korean, Russian, French, Spanish, German, Italian, American English, English and Portuguese.

In the field experiments, Hillenbrand documented the average latency with foreign language translation at approximate 25 milliseconds across five time zones with seven different people translating into five different languages. The testing highlighted several hurdles that have to be overcome including grammatical rules and sentence structure during translation.

"This is to be expected," said Hillenbrand. "We've taken this from proof of concept to testing in the field in less than 12 months. That's why Combined Endeavor is an excellent environment to test and evaluate the interoperability of the program between NATO and PfP nations."

Russia has been one of the countries communicating with The Netherlands and the United States during CE-03.

"The idea is great," said Col. A. Berlin, chief of the Russian delegation, as his team inputted messages to his colleagues several tents away.