Found in Translation

America’s Language Problem
“Tomorrow is zero hour.”
“The match is about to begin.”
Al-Qaeda operatives issued these words in a communication on September 10,
2001. The messages, spoken in Arabic on taped phone conversations, were
intercepted successfully by U.S. intelligence on the same day. Unfortunately,
they were not translated until September 12, the day after the terrorist attacks.
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Obviously, messages such as these go through a process of qualification
before they are considered a credible threat. So it would be an overstatement to
blame the 9/11 attacks entirely on a lack of translation. Or would it? It is a
well-known fact that the government struggled with enormous backlogs of in-
language documents awaiting translation. For example, from 2006 to 2008, the
CIA collected forty-six million files but left one third of these untouched, due
in great part to the lack of translation resources.
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In the years that followed 9/11, the U.S. government made many attempts to
correct America’s increasingly visible language problem. It issued numerous
multibillion-dollar contracts to defense contractors who provided interpreters
and translators in places like Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It spent
enormous sums to improve multilingual intelligence gathering in languages
that were deemed critical for intelligence and defense purposes.
Most agencies that fall under the Department of Defense (DOD) launched
exhaustive campaigns to recruit the necessary linguistic resources. The United
States invested in better technologies to improve data mining and translate
information automatically. Various agencies issued large contracts for services
like multilingual media monitoring, and suddenly major contractors in the DC
area began hiring full-time language staff for languages like Arabic, Pashto,
and Kurdish. The sole job of these individuals is to scan news items and listen
to local radio reports in other languages and produce English-language
summaries of what is happening on the ground. But all of these efforts were
insufficient. Government reports continue to show that America is far behind
its optimal levels of linguistic preparedness. Why?

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First, American students are not exactly known for their passion for foreign
language studies. Add to that a lack of investment in foreign language learning
by the government over the past few decades, and what do you get? A major
shortage of people with proficiency in critical languages. Of course, some
university programs teach foreign languages that are needed by the U.S.
government, but there are not enough to produce the numbers of graduates
required.
When it comes to linguistic preparedness, one saving grace of the United
States could be its linguistic diversity. After all, one out of five people speaks a
language other than English at home. Many of these individuals speak exactly
the same languages that the government needs, and some are even refugees
from places of military importance, like Afghanistan and Iraq. But many of
them are not proficient enough in both languages (especially English) to carry
out the kind of high-level tasks required for most full-time government
translation positions. In other words, even if immigrants and refugees help
address the lack of people proficient in critical languages, their lack of English
proficiency is often a barrier.
When candidates do have good language skills, though, there’s another
problem preventing the government from hiring some of them: the image
problem. Not everyone wants to work for the FBI or the CIA. Some see it as
morally ambiguous work, especially if they’ll be doing things like, say,
listening to wiretapped conversations of people living in their home country.
Even native-born Americans who study languages abroad often develop close
relationships with individuals in those countries that may make them
ambivalent about collaborating with the U.S. government’s intelligence
activities.
And there is yet another major barrier in the way. Many of the translation
tasks that are carried out by government employees require the highest-level
security clearances. This leaves a tiny pool of candidates. What’s more,
government contractors receive billions of dollars from Uncle Sam to do all
kinds of different language-related tasks that require lower-level clearances.
They also happen to pay more. What can be done? Secretary of Defense Leon
Panetta has been an advocate for foreign-language training throughout his
career, dating back to the Carter administration. However, while Panetta’s
support for language training is crucial, that alone will not fill the gaping
language chasm facing the United States. It takes years to become fully fluent
in a foreign language. Simply investing more in foreign language education
might have worked for America back in cold war times, but not anymore.
There are several things that the U.S. government can do to address its lack

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of linguistic preparedness. For example, it can reevaluate its translation
technology to intelligently separate diverse types of information. It also can
and should identify all of the language resources that exist in the country, so
that they cannot be hoarded by contractors.
Still, a more difficult task is to get the American society to see language not
as something strange or un-American but rather as a valuable asset. To use a
term more common in the capitalist parlance of this society, we need to see it
as a competitive advantage. Government support for a new attitude toward
language would encourage more people to become bilingual. We don’t just
mean the Anglos who are the typical targets of government funds for foreign
language education but also the heritage speakers who remain at risk of losing
their bilingualism. For these folks, such languages are not foreign but already
familiar.