Raytheon unit wins additional $6m on contract

Associated Press

Raytheon Co., the Waltham-based defense contractor, said its BBN Technologies subsidiary has been awarded an additional $6.1 million in funding from a defense project to help troops rapidly translate foreign language text while on the battlefield.

The additional money from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency follows BBN's success in meeting required milestones during the first two years of the program, called Multilingual Automatic Document Classification, Analysis and Translation. Under the contract, Cambridge-based BBN will further refine a prototype translation system developed under previous awards in the program. The system is designed to be deployed on a laptop computer so that military commanders and personnel can automatically convert foreign language text images into English transcripts, without the use of linguists and analysts. Examples include text images on road signs, flyers, photographs and handwritten notes.

Shares of Raytheon, based in Waltham, Mass., rose 54 cents to $48.01 in midday trading.