The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World

by Sharon Weinberger

The Phraselator was held up in Washington as a grand success, but Zemach had a different assessment: “It sucked.” On patrol in the Afghan village, Zemach held up the Phraselator, which looked more like a Star Trek tricorder than a universal translator. The device spit out a few sentences in the local language. The Phraselator had just said it was going to ask some questions and instructed the man being addressed to raise one hand for yes and two hands for no. The first question was whether the man understood this. The Afghan smiled and raised one hand. The next question was whether there were any foreign fighters in the area. The man raised two hands. No. Were there any minefields in the area? The man raised two hands. No, again. Then the group brought over a local interpreter. Suddenly the man’s answers changed. There was a minefield in the area, he reported. It was not that he was lying, Zemach concluded after many similar experiences; it was just that Afghans did not feel comfortable giving information to an electronic device. This scenario repeated itself in village after village, Zemach recalled a decade later.