Pentagon challenges teams to develop ultimate decoding machine

Red Herring reports that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has challenged three teams to develop a decoding machine that can monitor chatter in numerous languages and translate any important
information 
into English. The teams will receive nearly $50 million over two years to develop the equipment, although DARPA hasn't confirmed the final amount of the award, or whether the teams have already been awarded the contracts.  It's also not known if DARPA plans to narrow the teams down to two, or one, when the two-year program is over. If succesful, however, the project would be nothing short of the "Holy Grail" of human language technology, according to John Markhoul, one of the scientists working on the project.