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Introducing ECTACO SpeechGuard The world's first handheld speech-to-speech multilingual translator.  ENGLISH to: ARABIC, SPANISH, CHINESE, RUSSIAN, POLISH, FRENCH, HEBREW and more ...

TALK TO PEOPLE IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE!
In some situations timing and knowledge are critical. Human lives might be at stake. You can't afford any delays or gaps in communication. But if you are dealing with people who don't understand English, the Language Barrier could be a fatal roadblock.

• Thousands of most common phrases carefully chosen by professionals can be clearly and loudly reproduced in any of 20+ languages.
• Clear and simple layout, a big screen and powerful sound give you full control of the situation.

ECTACO SpeechGuard™ comes in three basic modifications for Police, Medical and Military personnel. It could also be used by coast guards, INS personnel, first responders, firemen, security officers, transportation employees, government officials, social workers, and many other professionals.

We believe ECTACO SpeechGuard™ will save your precious time, cut translation costs, prevent costly mistakes, and make your communication with clients and general public much more effective and rewarding.

If you have any questions or suggestions and are interested in receiving more information, please contact us at contact us.

HOW DOES SPEECHGUARD™ WORK?

Basically SpeechGuard™ is a bank of phrases, carefully chosen by professionals in your industry to serve the needs of typical users in various typical situations. SpeechGuard™ can store in its memory more than 3000 phrases and their translations into up to 25 languages. You can easily select the target language in the Setup menu and then all you do is find a phrase appropriate to the situation. SpeechGuard™ will produce both the spoken and the written versions of the phrase in the target language.

All phrases in SpeechGuard's memory are divided into Topics.
There are three ways to choose the phrase you need in a particular topic:

1. Manually - by selecting a phrase from the list. In this case you just navigate through the topic structure using touch screen or hardware buttons. It's also a useful way to familiarize yourself with the content.
2. Using the search function. To get the phrase you need more quickly you just type a key-word and all phrases containing this key-word will appear on screen.
3. Using voice function. Say a phrase into a built-in microphone in English and SpeechGuard™ will recognize it and produce its spoken version in the target language. This is the fastest way to get the phrase you want.

Customizing your SpeechGuard™ lexicon
You can create your own SpeechGuard™ lexicon, "My SpeechGuard", comprised of Most Frequently Used Phrases. Furthermore, you could add structure to your lexicon by organizing it into subtopics and special linguistic procedures selecting phrases in a particular order to fit your specific job functions and procedures. To do so, you move selected phrases from any topic into a special topic named "My SpeechGuard" where they will be more easily accessible. You can also do some linguistic "fine tuning". For example, choose the gender of a person you are speaking to - in some languages it makes a big difference in translation.

IMPORTANT!
SpeechGuard™ can store in its memory not only phrases, but also special messages and announcements. It could be any important message you need to convey repeatedly or broadcast to a wide audience: Miranda or NITSA warning, evacuation procedure for your office building, special announcement in a riot control situation, information for patients during intake procedure, etc. Just choose your message and SpeechGuard™ will pronounce it in a language of your choice, or repeat it consecutively in as many languages as you like.

SPECIAL FEATURES

SpeechGuard™ concept was developed in 2003 under a DARPA grant (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency within DOD SBIR program) primarily for military use. DARPA’s stated objective was "to build a noise-resistant, robust, portable, low cost, scalable, voice-enabled, speech recognition based, and multi-lingual translation device… with enhanced ASR (Advanced Speech Recognition) capabilities and ergonomic design usable for military purposes as well as adaptable for wide commercial distribution."

In keeping with DARPA objectives, SpeechGuard™ has certain unique features necessary to withstand the demands of heavy usage and harsh environments in mission-critical and life-threatening situations:

• Ergonomic design and convenient controls;
• Special configuration for low-cost mass production;
• Extra robustness, portability and scalability for flexible field use;
• Military-grade ease-of-learning and ease-of-use;
• Large, high-resolution touch screen with advanced GUI (Graphical User Interface);
• High-performance speaker;
• Special noise-reduction features;
• State-of-the-Art user-independent Speech Recognition with advanced acoustic and linguistic fine-tuning capabilities;
• Flexible user-customization features.

  SpeechGuard™ Specifications

  Design/Size	Contemporary ergonomic design. Water and dust proof case. Dimensions: 98x30x181mm, 3.9"x1.2"x7.1" (WxDxH).
  Weight	318 grams (with rechargeable battery).
  Operation	Simple to learn and operate. Hardware: 13 conveniently positioned buttons.
  Processor	ST Arm 9 STA2001 32-bit 200MHz CPU
  Memory	16 Megabyte RAM - 16 Megabyte ROM (or Flash)
  Expandable Memory	MMC/SD slot. Supports 8 to 64 Megabyte cards.
  Display	Touch screen. 240x320 (WxH) pixels. Screen backlight.
  Audio	AD1885 (AC97) CODEC, built-in 50mm high quality speaker.
  Microphone	Built-in microphone. High sensitivity, noise canceling.
  Speech recognition	State-of-the-art speaker independent speech recognition.
  Sound	Volume control. Buzzer. External headset, microphone, and headphone capability.
  Main Batteries	Rechargeable battery: 3.7V, Li-Pol 1800mAh. AC/DC adapter (charger) included in the standard package. Works up to 1 week without recharging (in sleep mode) or 8 hours of active use.
  Additional Features	User-defined topics, easy-to-use setup, search function, shortcuts. Device is reprogrammable, with multiple user-customization features.

FIND OUT IF WE HAVE A SPEECHGUARD™ SUITABLE TO YOUR NEEDS.

If we don't … well, we'll make it for you!

Your company may be a multinational Fortune-500 giant conquering global markets, an emerging growth company looking for that critical competitive edge, or a small chain of food stores struggling to retain its market share in the rapidly changing metropolitan environment. In a sense it doesn't matter. What really matters is whether you deal with customers or employees who speak languages other than English. And in today's increasingly interconnected world that is commonplace reality for most companies: from the smallest neighborhood store facing the ever growing ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity at the local level to high-tech start-ups and major corporate conglomerates with global aspirations.

ECTACO SpeechGuard™ comes in three basic modifications for Police, Military, and Medical personnel. It could also be used by coast guards, INS personnel, first responders, firemen, security officers, transportation employees, government officials, social workers, and many other professionals.

We offer several levels of customization at very reasonable costs.

1. Customization by ECTACO (Made-to-order SpeechGuard™).

Whether you need a completely different content or just an addition of some phrases to one of our basic SG versions, we offer the following range of services:

• we program the content provided by you: phrases, text messages, reference data;
• we translate your content into a specified set of languages (up to 25) providing both written and verbal translations;
• we provide minor or major GUI enhancement: topic structure; font size; quickly accessed functions; linguistic, functional, and workflow-related optimization, etc.;
• we provide SpeechGuard™ documentation, training and technical support to your key personnel;
• we thoroughly test your special SpeechGuard™ version, wrap it, and send it to you.

2. User customization.

If you find that one of our basic SpeechGuard™ versions meets most of you needs, and you require only minor changes, like adding a few phrases, you can take advantage of user's customization. You can buy one of our basic versions and add phrases and text messages yourself. See details on user customization here. (description of how to add phrases).

Besides adding content you can make some fine-tuning as well. Speaker adaptation is only one such example. SpeechGuard™ is a speaker independent device, but you can tune it to your speech pattern more precisely and improve its ability to recognize what you are saying even in a noisy environment.

Yet another level of customization is integrating SpeechGuard™ with your own or 3rd-party equipment. To suit your needs, we can provide SpeechGuard™ with a special noise canceling external microphone or sound amplifiers (e.g., a bullhorn). We can also interface it with or embed in your own or 3rd-party equipment of your choice.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT
After you purchase SpeechGuard™ you have the ability to add phrases to it. But if you want it done by ECTACO professionals, please, send us the content you want and we'll take care of the rest. Most SpeechGuard™ data is stored on special flash memory cards. It means that we can always make changes to content, and send you the updated cards. All you will need to do is put the new card into your SpeechGuard™.  We offer 1 year international warranty for labor and parts.

Industry Specific SpeechGuard Systems
 

Law Enforcement SpeechGuard (PD-4)	Medical SpeechGuard (MD-4)	Military SpeechGuard (GI-4)	Attorney SpeechGuard (AT-4)	Transportation Security SpeechGuard (TS-4)

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