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| Afghanistan |
| Military Translator SNAFU |
| 2009-07-23 |
| NAWA, Afghanistan -- Josh Habib lay in a dirt field, gasping for air. Two days of hiking with Marines through southern Afghanistan's 115-degree heat had exhausted him. This was not what he signed up for. Habib is not a Marine. He is a 53-year-old military translator/contractor. When he applied for the lucrative linguist job, Habib said his recruiter didn't tell him he would be part of a ground assault in Taliban country. He carried 40 pounds of food, water and gear on his back, and kept pace -- barely -- with Marines half his age. The company that recruits most U.S. citizen translators, Columbus, Ohio-based Mission Essential Personnel, says it's difficult to meet the increased demand for linguists to aid the 15,000 U.S. forces being sent to southern, Pashto-speaking parts of Afghanistan. Only 7,700 Pashto speakers live in the U.S., according to the 2000 census. Troops and translators say they suspect recruiting companies try to send as many interpreters as possible to Afghanistan to collect fees. Millions of dollars are involved. Known as Category II translators -- U.S. citizens who can obtain a security clearance -- such linguists earn a salary that starts at $210,000 a year. It is going on 8 years since 9/11 and the USA still has not dealt with its own language gap in a meaningful way. The military needed Pashto/Dari/Arabic/Farsi speakers, whatever, then, and even more now. No crash program in training healthy young US citizens to speak these languages was ever started, unlike the case after Sputnik was launched in 1957, when colleges all over the country suddenly started Russian language programs. Josh Habib should have been hired 8 years ago to teach courses in Pashto to 20-somethings. It seems there will be a continuing shortage of translators for another 8 years. |
| Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418 |
| #6 The issue is one of attitudes. The current conventional wisdom a multifaceted one. Part of it is that what takes away from the troop's ability to fight can be supplied by contractors. Another is the attitude that it was all supposed to be a war with lots of coming and going in many places. Hence no one language would do. The third is the attitude of academia. They don't like the current war; they won't cooperate. Besides Russian was more 'romantic', given the political tendencies of academia at the time. Hence the wider availability and aquiescence to studying the Russian language. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2009-07-23 23:17 |
| #5 ;-) Frank. Uniformed military and DOD civilians can access Rosetta Stone for free, online, from the DOD computers. |
| Posted by: lotp 2009-07-23 19:19 |
| #4 I'd rather spend languid hours with the lady |
| Posted by: Frank G 2009-07-23 18:39 |
| #3 There is different solution initiative well under way, to provide troops with handheld electronic translators. The earliest ones only managed set phrases but more sophisticated capabilites are on the way. Protoptypes have been tested in some countries and right now a project at the Afghan national military academy is collecting inputs for a Pashto version. And once the hardware and setup capabilities are in place, adding new languages is manageable. |
| Posted by: lotp 2009-07-23 15:26 |
| #2 This creates a conflict of interest when training US forces that might be at war with their native country, or in this case, religion. I grant you the possibility of a conflict of interest. However, Mission Essential Personnel is obviously able to come up with some interpreters who meet the very basic DOD standards to go to Afghanistan. (The possibility of a conflict of interest is even higher there.) Rather than sending the decrepit specimens mentioned in the article into the field, make them the teachers for intensive, multi-year, domestically based language training. The government has not shown signs of seriousness in dealing with this, unlike it did in the '50s. This is not a partisan issue, and would be just as important if combat operations were not going on. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2009-07-23 12:54 |
| #1 The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language School and Presidio of Monterey (DLIFLC) is just a fraction of the size it needs to be. To make matters worse, the facility is shared by lots of other federal agencies, especially the FBI. CIA has its own facility, as do the other intelligence services. However, there is a fundamental problem. Instructors at foreign language programs are often foreign nationals, or US citizens of foreign origin. This creates a conflict of interest when training US forces that might be at war with their native country, or in this case, religion. The seriousness of this problem is seen elsewhere, such as the foreign desks at the State Department, where loyalties can often be confused, at best. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-07-23 10:03 |