CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 17, 2012. The U.S. Army has awarded Raytheon BBN Technologies a $5.5 million contract to develop a two-way communication and translation system that can be used on a variety of operating systems and platforms, including portable, mobile and net-enabled devices.

Raytheon BBN Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN), will develop prototype systems for two-way speech-to-speech translation, document translation, and text-to-text translation. This capability will allow users to communicate with non-English speakers as well as to screen and translate printed or electronic text. In the initial technology development phase, BBN will develop the software architecture and implement it on prototypes in portable, mobile and net-enabled configurations.

The demand for this device has come from a lack of human translators and the inability of previous devices to translate more than a few canned phrases.