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After discharging 60 Arabic language translators for being gay, the military is now forced to rely on a translating machine that has not been fully tested, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

NIST researchers are evaluating a prototype, real-time, two-way translation systems for the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), point out that wartime military patrols and civilian encounters can be especially dangerous if neither group understands the other’s language.

The DARPA program called TRANSTAC (Spoken Language Communication and Translation System for Tactical Use) is aimed at meeting the shortage of Arabic translators caused by the firing of linguists under the 1993 “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Law”.

NIST ran a series of laboratory and outdoor evaluation tests on prototype systems with English-speaking US Marines and Iraqi Arabic speakers at its Gaithersburg campus and found that the systems have improved somewhat.

“Effective two-way translation devices would represent a major advance in field translators,” according to Craig Schlenoff, project leader of the NIST evaluation project . “Although American forces in Iraq currently have the use of phrase-based translators, the devices can only translate English into pre-recorded Arabic phrases. They cannot translate Iraqi Arabic into English.”

Non-profit groups who are fighting to repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell Law" claimed that military homophobia was harming national security.

"The military is placing homophobia well ahead of national security,"said Steve Ralls, spokesman for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. "It's rather appalling that in the weeks leading up to 9/11 messages were coming in, waiting to be translated ... and at the same time they were firing people who could've done that job."