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(U//FOUO) Machine Translation Success Story
FROM: the SIGINT Communications Team
Unknown
Run Date: 05/15/2003
(U//FOUO) We couldn't call this one a "SIGINT Success Story" because it goes so far beyond
SIGINT and is an accomplishment not only for NSA but for the entire Intelligence Community.
(S//SI) Curious? Last fall, a representative of our own Senior Language Authority (SLA) learned
that the CIA had obtained the latest and best Arabic machine translation software, produced
under a 7-year long development contract with a foreign firm. However, such software usually
needed to go through a costly and time-consuming code review process before it could be used.
The SLA representative pointed out that NSA's Information Assurance (IA) Research Group had
developed a capability that makes foreign software safe-and thus could provide a way for NSA to
host CIA's new Arabic machine translation securely and quickly.
(S//SI) Our SLA representative then partnered with the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI)
Foreign Language Committee and the Technical Manager of Language and Speech Exploitation
Resources at Ft. Huachuca to identify funding to implement the plan. The NSA Center for Applied
Machine Translation (CAMT) worked through the Chief Information Officer and the Research
Directorate to create a special turn key secure environment to host the necessary applications,
and the new secure environment was approved in mid-March.
(S//SI) The result? NSAnet was able to host CIA's latest Arabic machine translation just as the
Middle East situation escalated into war. In March, for example, 11,000+ documents were
translated through the CAMT, as compared to the usual 3,000. Users included the USS Carl
Vinson, the USS Abraham Lincoln, the USS Mount Whitney, and many other military intelligence
units deployed in the Gulf.
(U//FOUO) For further information, contact
Senior Language Technical
Authority; Chairman, LASER ACTD Text Integrated Product Team,
"(U//FOUO) SIDtoday articles may not be republished or reposted outside NSANet
without the consent of S0121 (DL sid comms)."
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DERIVED FROM: NSA/CSSM 1-52, DATED 08 JAN 2007 DECLASSIFY ON: 20320108