DARPA and NIST testing real-time translation system for use in Afghanistan… with a Nexus One

DARPA has long been working on making real-time translation systems practical and portable, and it seems like it\’s now closer than ever to its goal — although it’s going to\’t necessarily take all of the credit. The research agency recently teamed up with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (or NIST) to discover three different systems as component to its TRANSTAC project, no less than one of which relies on none except for a Nexus One to do real-time, spoken language translation from Pashto to English, and vice versa. Obviously, specific details on the translation systems are otherwise a little hard to return by, but NIST is more than pleased to draw a couple of Star Trek comparisons in its demonstration video — test it out after the break.