Device offers quick translation of damaged documents in seconds.

• Author: Williams, Robert H.
• Position: TECH TALK: A TIP-SHEET ON THE LATEST GADGETS - Brief article

Captured enemy documents--some burned or otherwise badly damaged--can yield critical intelligence for soldiers on the battlefield in a matter of seconds, according to Michael S. Yeagley, an executive with NovoDynamics Inc. of Vienna, Va.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The ability to "turn trash into gold," he says is made possible by software that extracts information from seemingly unreadable material and combines it with an optical character reader that recognizes Farsi, Dari, Pahto, Urdu, Hebrew, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, English and French.

"It automatically...