Syntax highlighting in ssh sessions

Question

I should really like to have my ssh sessions do syntax highlighting of configurations et al. of the output from my remote embedded devices. The devices cannot in any way output anything but flat text.

I currently do it in iTerm 2, but it is both clumsy, slow and worst of all, non-portable.

Does anyone know of a better solution, like setting up ssh to have syntax highlighting rendered from a local settings file?

Edit: Clarified that it was while accessing remote embedded devices