We currently publish courses that teach English speakers how to commnunicate in the Iraqi dialect of Arabic, the Pashtun and Dari languages of Afghanistan, and French as spoken in Sahel (sub-Saharan) Africa and Indonesian.

No, it isn't.

The Tactical Language & Culture Training System does not translate for you. Rather, it reduces your need for a translator, either human or artificial. This offers three main advantages:

• People in the foreign country will respect you more if you can communicate directly. It will also be easier for you to establish rapport.
• You can focus your attention on the person you are talking with, rather than a mechanical device.
• You learn culture as well as language. Translation devices don't address cultural issues which are often more important than words themselves.

This said, translators and dictionaries can be good complements to the knowledge gained from our courses.

DARPA has funded the development of the Phraselator. You speak into the device in English, it matches your speech against a library of known phrases, and then outputs the corresponding phrase in the foreign language.

This is very difficult to answer because instructor-led courses vary widely. Some critical factors that affect the effectiveness of instructor-led courses are the quality of the instructors, the number of students in the classes, and the length of the classes.

In general, we present several significant advantages, including increased convenience for the student (who doesn't need to coordinate schedule and location with the instructor), and lower costs.

We also present a higher level of personalized attention for each trainee. In a classroom with, say, 20 trainees, each one gets at most a handful of personalized attention from the instructor. With our system, trainees gets personalized feedback and guidance every moment they use it

In general, other software programs available today limit their scope to verbal communications. We teach both language and culture. That is, we teach "what to say, how to say it, and when to say it".

Also, we use very sophisticated, immersive, social simulations using videogames. This is a radical departure from the simpler, generic "repeat after me" methods used by other software-based courses.

We calibrate our speech-recognition models to accommodate the accents that we are likely to find within the groups of trainees who will use our courses.

This isn't easy because we have to pick a small set of items from among the thousands of items we could cover -- local customs, mannerisms, body language, norms of politeness, etc.

To ensure that you get the maximum value from the relatively few hours you will spend learning the foreign culture with our courses, we work very extensively with experts who are native to the countries and cultures we cover.

We also consult with Americans who have lived in those countries and cultures. Essentially, we ask them to share with you with the benefit of hindsight the cultural knowledge that would have been most valuable for them before visiting the foreign country.