Today, video games can virtually transport you to anywhere on the planet. You can be a solider on the frontlines, in the middle of the desert or in a foreign marketplace. 

While this may seem like many military-driven video games, it could be a life or death situation for a real-life soldier in terms of being able to communicate on the ground. That's why an L.A. based video game company is trying to bridge the gap for soldiers who need to learn language and cultural survival skills in foreign countries through an interactive video game. 

"Alelo, a modest L.A. company that works primarily with the U.S. military, is quietly using interactive video games to fundamentally transform the way we learn about foreign language and cultures," LA Weekly reports.

This clever technology could also help the large number of Latinos who serve in the military who may know Spanish, but not Arabic.

According to the National Council of La Raza, "Latinos have served with distinction in the U.S. military for generations. Forty-three Latinos have won our nation's highest award, the Congressional Medal of Honor. As of 2007, 1.1 million Hispanics were veterans of the U.S. armed forces. Approximately 16 percent of newly enlisted, active duty members of all branches of the military are Hispanic."  

Alelo (a Hawaiian reference to the word, tongue" or "tip of a paddle") is made up of about 40 employees, including: linguists, anthropologists, game designers, videographers, researchers and 3-D animators.

Based in Los Angeles, Calif., a city considered to be "one of the most diverse cities on the planet," the company benefits from its mult-cultural dynamic. "Its lessons include video clips from Angelenos who speak Swahili or Iraqi Arabic or who came from regions of strategic importance, including Southeast Asia, Taiwan and the Caribbean, explaining everything from business etiquette to slang."

In March of 2003, when the U.S.invaded Iraq with more than 140,000 troops, the language barrier was evident - fewer than 50 service members spoke Arabic.

"The language and culture of the region - that was an afterthought," James Reilly told LA Weekly's Amanda Lewis. "Alelo's senior training and technical support specialist. "But the shift has been 180 degrees. They realized that if you go in there and you offend everybody, you don't get your job done."

Now before deploying to Afghanistan, "soldiers can don headsets and practice their Pashto while conversing with 3-D virtual natives, who respond instantly and become increasingly hostile to foreigners at higher difficulty levels.

Over 30,000 U.S. soldiers have engaged in real-time conversations with artificially intelligent characters using the company's "social simulation" technology.

"Lessons cover relevant, practical scenarios such as purchasing supplies or enforcing a curfew. Once a soldier has practiced a few key phrases, the game will drop him into a realistic rural or urban landscape, where a burly civilian might gruffly ask what he wants," LA Weekly adds. "Village elders might be more or less amenable based on whether the previous player performed the proper hand gestures or provided necessary medicine.

"Unlike the popular Rosetta Stone language learning tool, which encourages rote memorization without cultural context and cannot emulate the natural flow of conversation," Lewis points out. "Alelo software uses surprisingly accurate speech-recognition technology to provide immediate feedback on pronunciation and politeness."

In the past, educating "soldiers in languages of strategic importance," the military relied heavily on the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey, Calif.

"Now, members of any branch of the military can practice their Arabic not only on a desktop computer but also on the go, using Alelo software on a mobile phone or laptop through the Department of Defense's Joint Knowledge Online network of military training games," Lewis explains. "Some even train with Alelo games at base warehouses, where the native character is projected onto a wall, standing at full height, and microphones in the room record the player's every word. Plus, coursework in Monterey now is "blended," meaning human teachers assign students to train with Alelo programs in addition to attending in-person classes."

Since its inception in 2003, Alelo has expanded its focus beyond Iraq and Afghanistan to teach languages such as sub-Saharan French and Indonesian, each of which has a course that's the equivalent of three college semesters.

In addition, Alelo's eight Virtual Cultural Awareness Trainers (VCATs), which cover regions such as the Horn of Africa and Central America, take about four hours and include only basic phrases in the native language, focusing instead on politics, religion and customs, including advice about how to avoid insulting your Afghani hosts (always accept tea when it's offered and never show the soles of your shoes), LA Weekly reports.