Powering-Up Communication

Could a small, relatively inexpensive, Spanish-speaking PDA-size translator have prevented a dramatic melee between Los Angeles police and civilians earlier this year—and the more than 250 legal claims against the city that resulted? Los Angeles Police Capt. Dennis Kato is betting on it.

The LAPD recently began outfitting several all-terrain vehicles with speakers designed to work with the Phraselator, a portable device that, when programmed, can translate up to 100,000 words or phrases in almost any language. Now the police can quickly broadcast basic crowd control messages—"We are here to support your First Amendment rights," or "This has been determined an unlawful assembly" or "We need you to move away"—and potentially prevent the chaos caused by miscommunication.

According to Kato the Phraselator might have prevented a clash between the LAPD and protesters at an immigration rally back in May. Overwhelmed by a swelling crowd that failed to heed dispersal orders, officers resorted to using their batons and firing nonlethal rounds, leaving hundreds injured. "We were relying on announcements made from a [noisy] helicopter. And the pilot who was available at the time spoke only English, even though he was addressing a largely Spanish-speaking crowd," says Kato, who is working with Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton to improve crowd-control procedures.

As any fan of "Star Trek" will tell you, universal language translators aren't exactly a new idea. Tech-savvy tourists have been downloading phrase translation programs to their PDAs for years. But the Phraselator, created by Annapolis, Md.-based Voxtec, is the first aimed at law enforcement agencies around the country that are struggling to serve increasingly multilingual communities.

The Phraselator owes its development, in part, to the Pentagon, which gave Voxtec funding after the September 11 attacks. An early version of the handheld device was introduced in 2002, when U.S. troops in Afghanistan began using them to better communicate with locals there. The military currently has 5,000 of the devices in use, many in Iraq. Now law enforcement agencies in L.A., Ohio and Miami, among other places, have begun using the Phraselator. According to Clayton Millis, Voxtec's director of sales and marketing, there are parallels between wartime communication needs overseas and law enforcement communication needs here, especially in rural communities. "Police departments, particularly in Middle America, they don't always have access to Spanish speakers," he says. And unlike consumers, law enforcement needs industrial-strength units that can stand up to inclement weather and harsh handling.

They also must translate clearly. For example, the police are required to make sure that everyone they arrest understands their Miranda rights: the right to remain silent, the right to speak to an attorney, etc. Failure to properly inform someone of those rights can mean the difference between conviction and acquittal. The legal language the police use must be precise—not necessarily what you'd find on the handheld translator your mother took on her trip to Paris last summer.