: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is testing one of its hot new gadgets in Afghanistan and Guantanamo: a device able to translate a soldier's words into any of several pre-selected languages. While this is a first step toward Star Trek's "universal translator", it has a ways to go. For one thing, the device is one-way only, translating an American soldier's words into Pashtu or Arabic or whatever, but not allowing the soldier to hear what the locals are saying in return. DARPA expects to add that capability in three years.--Stephen V Cole