A translation device developed for the U.S. military after the Sept. 11 attacks is helping an Alberta First Nation and other aboriginal groups across North America preserve their languages.

The Phraselator, used by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, translates English phrases into the language chosen by the user. The hand-held device, about 10 by 18 centimetres, is programmed with thousands of phrases deemed to be useful in a specific situation.

When a person speaks English, it repeats the phrase in the programmed language.

A teacher at the Siksika First Nation just east of Calgary said young people in particular could be helped by the device.

"Siksika is one of the languages that is decreasing. It's not being taught at home anymore," said Herman Yellowoldwoman. "The only people that are teaching the language are the schools, and very little is being taught at home."

Developed by VoxTec International of Maryland for military use in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001, it has now been adopted by U.S. law-enforcement organizations and aboriginal groups.

Thornton Media of California, owned by an American Indian, has worked with more than 40 tribes in the U.S. and Canada to help them control their own language destiny, the company website said.

"If your kids aren't learning the language, it doesn't matter how many speakers you have. If your kids aren't learning it, then your language is in trouble," Don Thornton said.

Most Siksika speakers older  

On the Siksika reserve, about 40 per cent of residents are fluent in the language, but most of them are over 45. Yellowoldwoman said even teachers have a hard time giving lessons to students.

"One of the biggest things is the sounds. When you write and read the Siksika language, the sound is not correct. And the only way they can ever get the correct sound is by listening."

The Phraselator has the sounds. And the machine can be programmed. 

"You can also enter songs or words," Thornton said. On its website, Thornton Media promises the hardware, software and training so users can program "in YOUR language" — at $3,300 US a unit.

On the Siksika reserve, teachers want to use the tool one on one with students. They like the idea. 

"It's [the language] a very important part of our culture. We want to keep it alive before it slowly disappears," said Larissa Calfrobe, 18.

Staff at the medical centre will also use the Phraselator so they can better communicate with patients who are more comfortable using their mother tongue.

Algorithms key to device

The Phraselator uses speech recognition algorithms, but is based on a different concept from most machine translation systems, the VoxTec website said.

Most efforts over the past 50 years of intense research have been based on the problem of recognizing phonemes — the smallest phonetic units that convey a distinct meaning, such as the "b" in bat — and universal translation.

Progress on the phoneme front has been slow, but VoxTec went at the problem by looking for a way to deal with phrases, recognizing that for most situations, there is "a specific lexicon that can effectively be communicated using a pre-defined, well-organized set of functional phrases."

Phraselator uses modules, groups of phrases in a given language designed by experts for specific uses such as disaster relief, the military or law enforcement, and then translated by linguists from the region where the language is spoken.

The modules advertised on its website range from Albanian to Vietnamese.