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View Full Version : We still don't grasp the value of translators



Brandon Friedman
07-24-2009, 01:53 AM
Writing for the AP, Jason Straziuso published a troubling piece Thursday morning called, "Many translators unfit in any language." (http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/07/ap_translators_afghanistan_072209/) Here's an excerpt:


U.S. troops say companies that recruit military translators are sending linguists to southern Afghanistan who are unprepared to serve in combat, even as hundreds more are needed to support the growing number of troops.

Some translators are in their 60s and 70s and in poor physical condition — and some don’t even speak the right language.

“I’ve met guys off the planes and have immediately sent them back because they weren’t in the proper physical shape,” said Gunnery Sgt. James Spangler, who is in charge of linguists at Camp Leatherneck, the largest U.S. base in Helmand province.

“They were too old. They couldn’t breathe. They complained about heart problems,” he said. “We almost made a joke of it. We’re almost receiving people on oxygen tanks and colostomy bags; it’s almost getting to that point.”

And that’s not the worst of it.

Troops say low-skilled and disgruntled translators are putting U.S. forces at risk.

“Intelligence can save Marines’ lives and give us the advantage on the battlefield,” said Cpl. William Woodall, 26, of Dallas, who works closely with translators. “Instead of looking for quality, the companies are just pushing bodies out here, and once they’re out the door, it’s not their problem anymore.”

What I still don't understand is why a military operating in a COIN evironment would attempt to outsource arguably its most important tactical skill: communicating with the locals. We don't outsource any other critical skill in infantry units. The medic? He's not a contractor. The forward observer? He's not a contractor. The grenadier? He's not a contractor. So why are translators outsourced in a similar fashion to cooks and the people who do the laundry? What does that say about our priorities?

I'm well aware that the length of time to adequately train an interpreter is considerably longer than the time to train an FO or a SAW gunner. I also know that native speakers are not only best, but also hard to come by. But in the case of Afghanistan, we've been there for eight years and have made little effort to emphasize the acquisition of language skills in soldiers themselves. Instead of outsourcing the job of recruiting Pashto, Farsi, and Arabic speakers, why isn't the military recruiting them and sending them to Basic Training or OCS? Why aren't we sending more soldiers to DLI? We've had eight years to work on this, and we probably have at least eight more ahead of us. This is a critical skill that shouldn't be undervalued as it seemingly is now.

Schmedlap
07-24-2009, 02:44 AM
What does that say about our priorities?
I think it speaks more to the available supply and our ability to produce them than to our priorities.


Instead of outsourcing the job of recruiting Pashto, Farsi, and Arabic speakers, why isn't the military recruiting them and sending them to Basic Training or OCS? Why aren't we sending more soldiers to DLI? We've had eight years to work on this, and we probably have at least eight more ahead of us. This is a critical skill that shouldn't be undervalued as it seemingly is now.
I don't know the answer, but here is one observation that I think sheds some light on it:

I know several people who either learned Arabic in college or doled out cash to learn through a language school like Berlitz or similar services. They are all earning buckets of money working as linguists for companies who do business in the mideast. I don't think that any of them have any intention of enlisting in the military to take a 90% pay cut, spend 8 weeks in basic training getting yelled at and doing pushups, then go live in some crappy town outside of a military base, and then deploy to an austere outpost in a dangerous locale, rather than being put up in a hotel in Dubai.

One other observation: the work of a translator seems to combine the dual demands of working in dangerous conditions AND doing a job that does not involve (or at least is not perceived as) movie-like action and adventure. To whom does that appeal? It's one thing to volunteer for a dangerous job in order to fight. It's another to volunteer for a dangerous job to just get shot at. You mentioned combat medics. Most combat medics whom I knew did not just want to treat casualties. They wanted to fight through a gauntlet of withering machine gun fire and slay 20 enemy to get to the casualty and then treat him. That was the vision in their heads when they enlisted. What is the vision in the mind of an individual contemplating joining the Army and then going to DLI? The beach at Monterrey?

Again, I don't know the solution. But I think the problem is a little more complicated than recruiting 13- and 91-series personnel and thus not the best comparison.

Ken White
07-24-2009, 03:47 AM
There are plenty of good, dedicated linguists in the services -- most of them are properly employed and are not serving as 'terps -- nor should they be. The length of language training for a post pubescent person to get proficiency in a second language starting from scratch is in excess of three years. That is quite costly and to take that person and put him or her in the field with a rifle company in combat would not really be a very good use of resources.

Train 'em for a year and you get marginal proficiency, do an accelerated course and you get less. That is not to say that everyone shouldn't get some basic phrases, they should and good leaders will make them use them but that's a long way from being a translator or interpreter.

Language training at DLI (full disclosure; Farsi student there, BCE, here) includes some cultural adaptation. Speaking from experience, that cultural adaptation is mediocre at best -- because the foreign born instructors are not going to tell you all the bad stuff you need to know. I learned more in 30 days in country then I had in a year at the Presidio. I also learned that my language skill was below marginal, not quite laughable to most Iranians but close (they're very polite) -- and that most of the school graduates I met there and in other countries believed the same was true of their experience

I also spent more time traveling out of Iran and having to deal with Arabic than I did having to deal with Farsi in Iran. Much like a good friend who spent a year learning Viet Namese and a year advising a Montagnard Battalion wherein no one spoke Viet Namese. Or the ASA guy voice intercept guy in Iran who was a Mandarin linguist (he ended up being the Station's chief scrounger)...

Not to mention that all the training in the world won't give you a sense of the nuances and little clues that a locally born and raised interpreter will.

Having watch the USG try to hire interpreters in several languages in various locales for combat use and having watched the performance of some so hired, I noticed that not many local really wanted to take the interpreter job because it's dangerous and their friends and neighbors don't approve. I also noticed that among those hired, cases of divided loyalties were quite common -- leading to a high turnover rate. There also seemed all too often to be a lack of quality; since the job wasn't popular, you didn't get the best and the brightest.

No question that it would be nice to have good 'terps down to platoon level but it's difficult. There are no easy solutions to that -- stick your nose in another nation and that's one of the smaller problems you will accrue. There are other more pressing problems.

Brandon Friedman
07-24-2009, 04:26 AM
I think it speaks more to the available supply and our ability to produce them than to our priorities.

The supply isn't there because we haven't spent the last eight years training soldiers in critical language skills. Hindsight is 20/20, but in 2001, we could've started offering $60,000/six-year signing bonuses for recruits and soldiers willing to learn Arabic/Farsi/Pashto/etc. We could've bought 6,000 such translators for the price of one F-22. We shouldn’t make the same mistake again, in my view.


I don't know the answer, but here is one observation that I think sheds some light on it:

I know several people who either learned Arabic in college or doled out cash to learn through a language school like Berlitz or similar services. They are all earning buckets of money working as linguists for companies who do business in the mideast. I don't think that any of them have any intention of enlisting in the military to take a 90% pay cut, spend 8 weeks in basic training getting yelled at and doing pushups, then go live in some crappy town outside of a military base, and then deploy to an austere outpost in a dangerous locale, rather than being put up in a hotel in Dubai.

That's simply because we're not prioritizing it. Two years ago, I heard a lot about the plan to offer O-3s $35,000 to stay in, but I didn't hear a similar PR push to gain or retain translators with a similar offer. If we want to succeed in this type of environment, we have to pay for it. Again, I go back to the F-22.


There are plenty of good, dedicated linguists in the services -- most of them are properly employed and are not serving as 'terps -- nor should they be. The length of language training for a post pubescent person to get proficiency in a second language starting from scratch is in excess of three years. That is quite costly and to take that person and put him or her in the field with a rifle company in combat would not really be a very good use of resources.

Train 'em for a year and you get marginal proficiency, do an accelerated course and you get less. That is not to say that everyone shouldn't get some basic phrases, they should and good leaders will make them use them but that's a long way from being a translator or interpreter.

Language training at DLI (full disclosure; Farsi student there, BCE, here) includes some cultural adaptation. Speaking from experience, that cultural adaptation is mediocre at best -- because the foreign born instructors are not going to tell you all the bad stuff you need to know. I learned more in 30 days in country then I had in a year at the Presidio. I also learned that my language skill was below marginal, not quite laughable to most Iranians but close (they're very polite) -- and that most of the school graduates I met there and in other countries believed the same was true of their experience

We were lucky enough to have a DLI-trained Arabic translator assigned to our company for three weeks when we first arrived in Baghdad in April 2003. She was nothing like you're describing. Her Arabic wasn't perfect, but she could communicate adequately for our tactical needs, she was the most culturally aware and sensitive member of the company, and Iraqis were willing to work with her. If she was representative of what DLI is capable of turning out in a year's time, I'd take that any day over what the contractors seem to be providing.

IntelTrooper
07-24-2009, 04:34 AM
Instead of outsourcing the job of recruiting Pashto, Farsi, and Arabic speakers, why isn't the military recruiting them and sending them to Basic Training or OCS?
Schmedlap hit it on the head regarding why we aren't able to recruit many native-speaking linguists into the military. I had an 09L (that's a basic linguist) when we started our tour in Afghanistan. He spoke perfect Pashtu and perfect English. He was 24, in shape and spent time in Konar with the infantry there so he was tactically proficient (his rifle even had better optics than mine!). Unfortunately, he wasn't a US citizen at the time, so he couldn't get a security clearance, which meant he couldn't get an intel MOS. Technically we weren't allowed to use him for certain facets of our job. He volunteered to extend his tour, but no one would let him. It was just too much paperwork. As soon as he got back to the US, he got a job as a contract linguist making three or four times what he made as a soldier. But yeah, no clue why someone like that wouldn't want to join the military. :P

Think about this: most Afghan expats left the country between the late 1970s and early 1990s. The people who could do that were probably of certain economic status which means they were probably older or the children of someone with such status. These people rarely lived in the Pashtu speaking portions of the country. Need a 50 to 60-year-old Dari speaking Afghan with US citizenship? No problem. Need a young, Pashtu speaking US citizen? Not likely.

I dealt with this issue firsthand. We were lucky most of the time but I had an interpreter for a few weeks who spoke less Pashtu than I did. The linguist contract managers were ignoring the pleas of the interpreters not to send them to Pashtu-speaking areas because they didn't speak Pashtu. The contract managers turned a deaf ear to their pleas because they thought that Pashtu speakers were trying to hide their ability so that they wouldn't have to go to dangerous areas. Additionally, non-Pashtu speakers were getting help from fellow Afghans during the hiring process, in that they were given ways to cheat during the Pashtu proficiency tests so they would be more likely to get hired.

So yeah, the situation is f-ed up, but I don't expect it to get better unless we have a mass exodus of Pashtu- and English-speaking Pakistanis to the States (who, by the way, travel back in time 15 years so they'll be eligible for US citizenship by now). :P

IntelTrooper
07-24-2009, 04:38 AM
If she was representative of what DLI is capable of turning out in a year's time, I'd take that any day over what the contractors seem to be providing.
I guarantee she's not representative of the average DLI graduate. She may have an unusually high aptitude for learning a second language. It is a half-joke in the MI that DLI only prepares graduates to check the quality of their interpreter.

Schmedlap
07-24-2009, 05:12 AM
Hindsight is 20/20, but in 2001, we could've started offering $60,000/six-year signing bonuses for recruits and soldiers willing to learn Arabic/Farsi/Pashto/etc. We could've bought 6,000 such translators for the price of one F-22... We were lucky enough to have a DLI-trained Arabic translator assigned to our company for three weeks when we first arrived in Baghdad in April 2003... Her Arabic wasn't perfect, but she could communicate adequately for our tactical needs, she was the most culturally aware and sensitive member of the company, and Iraqis were willing to work with her.

That is an Apple and Orange Pie in the Sky.

Apples and Oranges: Downtown Baghdad in 2003 versus Korengal Valley today is like comparing downtown San Francisco to some remote town in the south that doesn't take kindly to non-WASPs.

Made into a pie: Thinking you're going to get similar proficiency from most graduates of DLI (see Ken and IntelTroop's posts)

Tossed into the sky: Thinking that you're going to attract people with potential by offering a bonus that amounts to $10K per year for an extended commitment of 6 years when they can go to college, have fun, major in Arabic, and then earn 6 figures without getting shot at.

Also - a retention bonus to change MOS means that those Soldiers are being taken away from some other part of the Army. In 2001 to 2004, most units were badly undermanned. In OIF I, we had the luxury of stop-loss and stop-move to plus up the unit. My company deployed to OIF III at 80% strength. That was typical for the BDE. I don't think taking thousands more Soldiers away from undermanned units was feasible at the time. The situation back then was also significantly more uncertain, so I would not say "hindsight is 20/20" and then follow it up with "but..." You have to make decisions with the information available at the time.


Two years ago, I heard a lot about the plan to offer O-3s $35,000 to stay in, but I didn't hear a similar PR push to gain or retain translators with a similar offer.

If a bonus didn't work to retain Officers, then why would a pay cut work to attract linguists?

Meinertzhagen
07-24-2009, 05:19 AM
My sense, though I have no definitive data to support it, is that there was a much more extensive program to teach Vietnamese during the Vietnam War than we have undertaken for our current conflicts. I'll do some research this afternoon, but anecdotal evidence from reading suggests SF teams, advisors, MI personnel, interrogators and a host of other personnel all received training and many became quite proficient in Vietnamese and other local languages. In contrast, I know almost no Army personnel in MI, SF or any other branch that have developed any significant capability in Pashto. I am branch transferring to Civil Affairs this year and Pashto isn't even one of the choices for languages, though we can still choose Russian and Korean. There are a total of 8(!) Pashto coded positions in the entire Army (all in the 96th Civil Affairs BN) despite over 8 years fighting in Afghanistan. While not indicative of the total number of soldiers actually training in DLI, those MTOE and TDA positions drive training and suggest to me a singular lack of effort to develop any institutional Pashto capability.

Brandon Friedman
07-24-2009, 05:33 AM
You guys are saying that we can't adequately hire, train, and retain our own translators. At the same time, the AP is reporting--as is IntelTrooper--that troops in the field say the contractors can't provide satisfactory interpreters, either.

This means we can't do COIN. I’m going to have a Bill Paxton moment. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTifdoKXoxM)

And Schmedlap:


Downtown Baghdad in 2003 versus Korengal Valley today is like comparing downtown San Francisco to some remote town in the south that doesn't take kindly to non-WASPs.

That’s absolutely true. I stand corrected on my example. Shouldn’t have used it.

Ken White
07-24-2009, 06:49 AM
We were lucky enough to have a DLI-trained Arabic translator assigned to our company for three weeks when we first arrived in Baghdad in April 2003. She was nothing like you're describing. Her Arabic wasn't perfect, but she could communicate adequately for our tactical needs, she was the most culturally aware and sensitive member of the company, and Iraqis were willing to work with her. If she was representative of what DLI is capable of turning out in a year's time, I'd take that any day over what the contractors seem to be providing.I'm sure most people would be happy to have someone like that. I do note you only had her for three weeks and while I have no idea why that short time, I still contend that the expense of even one year of Arabic without the intermediate and advanced follow-ons is not sensibly risked at Company level.
You guys are saying that we can't adequately hire, train, and retain our own translators. At the same time, the AP is reporting--as is IntelTrooper--that troops in the field say the contractors can't provide satisfactory interpreters, either.Yep, and as I said, that's been true for many years.
This means we can't do COIN.Not so. Just means it isn't easy and you have to work harder and get frustrated more often. Gray hair makes guys look distinguished. Gives the young gravitas...:wry:

Meinertzhagen:
... there was a much more extensive program to teach Vietnamese during the Vietnam War than we have undertaken for our current conflicts.There was, aside from DLI at Monterey, Anacostia and Lackland, there were subsidiary schools at Bragg and Gordon (may have been more). All ran short six week courses as well as the major locations running the long courses. All assigned to Advisory duty supposedly went to a twelve week Military Assistance Training Advisor (MATA) Course, six weeks of language and six of advisor training, tactical stuff and so forth. IIRC, about two thirds actually got to the Course and most but not all those did serve as Advisors where the language was helpful. The course was not operating early on, seems like it came on line in 66.

The quality of instruction varied as all instructors are not equal and the quality of graduates varied even more as all persons do not adapt to another language equally well. Notably, as Viet Namese is a tonal language, the native Spanish speakers did better than most anglos. No other local languages were taught to my knowledge except for a little Rhade and Meo briefly at Bragg. As a point of interest, to my knowledge few Infantry Battalions in Viet Nam had or used interpreters (I know of none) but SF, PsyOps and Civil Affairs did. Some turned out to be agents for Clyde but most were straight. Some with the SF teams got to be quite proficient -- they were generally the ones that didn't mind fighting; a trait not all interpreters there shared.

The MATA course was taught at Bragg by the Special Warfare School and they put some great effort into it. They got help from the 82d who only sent one Bde to VN. This time around they're pulling year on an year off like everyone else plus the relationship now is not as good as it used to be.

Today SF / SOCOM still have the FID proponency but they declined to operate any courses for other than SOCOM personnel due to mission pressure. They are providing people to assist at Riley and at Polk

All that was doable then because security clearance procedures could be and were waived, visa issues were ignored and instructors were flown from Viet Nam to the US to teach the classes, pay was outside the norms on the high side and SF fully supported the training mission at Bragg. That and the Army and the government wanted to do it (at least early on). The vastly increased bureaucracy plus current inter agency and inter force parochialism will not allow any of that today. The initial stage of today's wars were not fondly welcomed by the bulk of the USG or the Army; thus VN's 'can-do' was replaced with Afghanistan and Iraq's 'we don't really want to do this' on many levels.

All those factors combine to make a big difference in what gets done and how. Stupid, but there you are.
anecdotal evidence from reading suggests SF teams, advisors, MI personnel, interrogators and a host of other personnel all received training and many became quite proficient in Vietnamese and other local languages.Be interested to see what you turn up. My recollection is that those with a flair for languages did okay and those the pulled multiple tours where they interfaced with the Viet Namese daily did so as well. For most others, it was a smattering and little more. I suspect your 'host' and 'many' will be overstatements with respect to total numbers deployed to SEA and even to Advisory duty but there's no question that the numbers exceed today's spotty efforts on a per capita as well as a raw basis.
In contrast, I know almost no Army personnel in MI, SF or any other branch that have developed any significant capability in Pashto. I am branch transferring to Civil Affairs this year and Pashto isn't even one of the choices for languages, though we can still choose Russian and Korean.They're still important.
...suggest to me a singular lack of effort to develop any institutional Pashto capability.True. Consider what you know of our involvement in Afghanistan and of US history, add to that your knowledge of USG bureaucracy and if you're like me you come up with no excuse, we could've done better but we didn't and I know why and cannot fix it and don't think the Army's going to do so in the time we have left there... :rolleyes:

Surferbeetle
07-24-2009, 03:17 PM
Gray hair makes guys look distinguished. Gives the young gravitas...:wry:

So that's whats helping me get things done these days...:wry:

I have worked with Arabic, Kurdish, Russian, and Spanish translators...bottom line is that you get what you pay for. In CA land if you are willing to stick with open-source topics and willing/able to pay top dollar you can do well...at the macro level however you need to be aware of the potential implications of siphoning off highly educated local economy individuals from their day jobs.

Keep in mind that some professional translators, in addition to their language training (4 years +), are carrying masters degrees in translation & interpretation (http://translate.miis.edu/prospective/degrees.html) which help them work with business issues and the technology (databases, etc) which often accompanies technical translation efforts.

As a baseline I did the five month SOLT in Spanish; my understanding is fair and my speaking is poor...2/2/2. 3 years of high school German, 3 years of college German, 4 years on the German economy plus some other German experiences and the result is 3/3/3 (haven't taken the new test yet, but I am curious to see what it offers). A professional translator can clean my clock in both languages....and probably English as well.

The 10,000 hour rule of thumb is something to think about when considering the services of a professional. For my nickel, Brandon is on the money with this analysis of our ability to develop in-house talent in this arena:


The supply isn't there because we haven't spent the last eight years training soldiers in critical language skills. Hindsight is 20/20, but in 2001, we could've started offering $60,000/six-year signing bonuses for recruits and soldiers willing to learn Arabic/Farsi/Pashto/etc. We could've bought 6,000 such translators for the price of one F-22. We shouldn’t make the same mistake again, in my view.

Adding a focused Warrant Officer linguist program with opportunities for multiple incentive pay's is probably a realistic long term answer to our current linguist program (http://www.goarmy.com/linguist/index.jsp) shortages if we want to have dependable in-house capacity and capability...

Stan
07-24-2009, 03:38 PM
Check out Jedburgh's thread (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=5720&highlight=language+training) and see just how far we have regressed :rolleyes:

AND, if you think we are in a sad state now, imagine in 94 we could only muster one Lingala translator and perhaps three French speakers while over 4,000 people died per day in Sub Sahara !

Regards, Stan


You guys are saying that we can't adequately hire, train, and retain our own translators.

Jedburgh
07-24-2009, 03:57 PM
.....Why aren't we sending more soldiers to DLI? We've had eight years to work on this, and we probably have at least eight more ahead of us. This is a critical skill that shouldn't be undervalued as it seemingly is now.
Added emphasis is mine. I've voiced my feelings on this board before regarding the short-sighted approach DA took to language training in upmanning HUMINT - which used to be a language-dependent MOS. Rather than repeat myself, if anyone cares they can view those earlier posts here (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=1073&postcount=2) and here (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=5010&postcount=8).

Ken White
07-24-2009, 05:30 PM
Reviewing this thread and Jedburgh's thread some then and now comparisons forcefully smacked me in the face. The difference between the language approach in Viet Nam (which was far from perfect but much better than today's efforts) and the HUMINT Troops lack of a language is simple.

We used to do what was right; today we do what the boss wants or is presumed to want. Thus my subject line.

John T. Fishel
07-24-2009, 05:37 PM
In my experience working with native Spanish and Portuguese speakers both as a soldier and civilian, I am more comfortable dealing directly with them with my 3/3/3 Spanish and somewhat lesser Portuguese than I would be having to work with an interpreter. You can usually work through words and phrases that you don't understand better w/o a terp, if your language is at an adequate level and your non-verbal (cultural) communication skills and intuitions are strong. So, the investment, IMO, should be in getting as many soldiers as possible (given the MOS) capable of functioning in the host language rather than trying for the perfect terp.

Must be the FAO in me talking.:rolleyes:

Cheers

JohnT

Steve Blair
07-24-2009, 05:56 PM
Be interested to see what you turn up. My recollection is that those with a flair for languages did okay and those the pulled multiple tours where they interfaced with the Viet Namese daily did so as well. For most others, it was a smattering and little more. I suspect your 'host' and 'many' will be overstatements with respect to total numbers deployed to SEA and even to Advisory duty but there's no question that the numbers exceed today's spotty efforts on a per capita as well as a raw basis.

My research tends to support Ken's observations. There were SOME Americans in Vietnam who did well with the language, but they tended to be focused in very specific areas. I would never say there was a 'host' or even 'many' for that matter, and certainly not in the line units, but there did seem to be a more conscious attempt to put the resources out there.

pjmunson
07-24-2009, 06:38 PM
They always sell themselves that way and it is true. They are also negligent in their refusal to properly tailor their curriculum, or at least some courses, to the operating forces.

Whenever you pay people to do language all day long, five days a week for six to eighteen months and provide the greatest collection of native language speakers in one place AND don't give them anything else (college classes, other burdens, jobs to pay college bills) then you are going to have a great capacity to teach languages. That is why DLI is the best in the world and that is also why it is criminal that they cannot do better with what they've got.

One problem is that the school is only aimed at producing professional linguists in one mold and it is assumed that they will be back for following intermediate and advanced courses, dialect courses, etc. Thus, it focuses on learning a language clasically, stressing grammar, writing etc, to the detriment of being able to actually use it to communicate with people on the street. It is also very focused on listening and document reading rather than conversation and spends a lot of time on creating skills, such as detailed transcription, translation, and other listening skills, that not all linguists will need. I do think that we need to have people who have such a good basis, but the school should have stood up a program more focused on interacting with native speakers shortly after 9/11 to run alongside their main courses. So, you've got HUMINT guys and FAOs who are going to do a lot more face-to-face interaction studying alongside folks who are going to spend their careers listening to recordings and the skill sets are different. If you need operational language capability now, you can't wait to train up a linguist through three separate schools (basic, intermed, advanced). You need to focus the training.

With regard to Arabic, a major stumbling block is that despite the pleas of operational linguists, highly experienced military language instructors, some native instructors that worked as terps or in their own militaries, and even language academics at other premier institutions, DLI institutionally refuses to move away from the complete Modern Standard Arabic model they've run for years and move toward what many call "Educated Spoken Arabic." Basically, all literate Arabs know how to read MSA and understand it spoken, so it is the language of the press, official forums, etc. If you can speak MSA, almost anyone will understand you. Problem is, most people will respond to you in some mix of dialect. DLI says we can't teach all the dialects, so we won't try at all. However, other schools and agencies recognize that there is a core of common words that a lot of the dialects share and that you can teach a "standard dialect." DLI will have none of it. So, if a DLI grad from the Arabic basic course is stellar and attains a 3/3, which is on the order of less than 10% of the graduating population, from my limited experience, they still won't understand when an Arab in any city says "What are you doing here" because all the words in that sentence differ from MSA to dialect, but they are relatively common between dialects. To give an indication of the problem, the words that vary between MSA and dialect are basic, critical words: to do, to see, to look, to go, question words, negation, now, today, tomorrow, left, go straight, man, woman, etc. If one learns the standard dialect, Arabs will still be able to go deeper into their local dialect and not be understood, but if they want to communicate with you, they will be able to. Not all Arabs can easily speak to you in MSA though, or will try to.

If the right pressure was brought to bear, the school could be training at least some of your linguists, intel types, and FAOs to speak this standard dialect and could emphasize speaking conversationally over transcription, translation, and other more technical linguist skills, but to date the bureaucracy has successfully resisted.

davidbfpo
07-24-2009, 07:41 PM
Given that there are refugee / expatriate communities from around the world in the developed / Western world, why can't we recruit from them? I read elsewhere today that 40k Afghans reside in the Ukraine, as a settled community; I concede they may not be Pathans - the current need.

A colleague who served in Kabul a few years ago referred to working with Swedish-Iranians (as Farsi was close to Dari) and another that Canada has Canadian-Afghans who wish to serve.

Just seems from this armchair that the responses have been 'stovepiped' and lack imagination.

davidbfpo

IntelTrooper
07-24-2009, 08:15 PM
A colleague who served in Kabul a few years ago referred to working with Swedish-Iranians (as Farsi was close to Dari) and another that Canada has Canadian-Afghans who wish to serve.

We don't really have a lack of Dari speakers. We need Pashtu speakers, who are more difficult to find. Specifically, Pashtu speakers who are also US citizens.

carl
07-24-2009, 10:55 PM
The most distressing thing about this thread is that the "can do" "we'll figure something out" attitude of yesteryear has been replaced by a modern attitude that can't get anything done, even if everybody acknowledges it to be important. And I don't mean the guys commenting on this thread, I mean the gov and military as a whole. There is always a good reason why they won't do it.

I know this will never happen, but what if you just made a program whereby any soldier who demonstrated a certain level of language proficiency were given a huge monthly bonus, say $2,000? Let the men figure out how they learned on their own. The idea is to motivate the language "naturals" into action. Would that kind of thing be at all practicable, aside from the bureaucratic reluctance?

Since the F-22 has been mentioned, if you ever really need an F-22, 20,000 world class terps could not substitute. I know the point is about spending money wisely and the F-22 is a shining target but there may come a day...and there will be NO substitute.

Uboat509
07-25-2009, 12:56 AM
I suspect that part of the reason that the military does not have more terps in house is that the military takes a long view of the whole thing. Sure, we need a lot of Pashto speakers now but, eventually, we will leave there. In today's contentious political climate you never know if that might not be sooner rather than later. If that does happen, what do you do with all the extra Pashto speakers? That's why the military likes contractors for a lot of things. If we don't need them tomorrow, we just don't renew their contracts. Whereas if we fill those needs in house and the requirement goes away or at least gets reduced a lot then we still have all those bodies that we can't just get rid of. Now we have to either retrain them, which after all the resources spent on training them in the first place is not particularly attractive option, or we have a draw-down, which is also expensive.

SFC W

pjmunson
07-25-2009, 01:04 AM
They did considerably up the language proficiency pay, although not nearly as much as you suggest, Carl. The max is far less than that figure, although nothing to sneeze at, but in order to get the max, you have to be professionally proficient, or nearly so, in three testable languages. Add to the problem the fact that the Defense Language Proficiency Test has nothing to do with your ability to rap with someone in Dari, Pashtu, or Arabic, but has everything to do with whether you can read newspaper and magazine passages and listen to Syrian soap operas and al-Jazeera and then answer questions meant more to stump the chump than to test your comprehension. So our metrics are off because they do not test the skills we need to employ operationally. For those who might think this sounds like sour grapes, I get 3/3 on the Arabic test, so I'm not mad that I can't pass it. I'm mad that the system is so broke and no matter how hard you try, the arrogant "academics" at DLI and the inertia of the bureaucracy there stymie all efforts.

That's where, as you said pretty much, "can do" runs into a brick wall. For a number of reasons, from the agencies where DLI's money comes from, to the cultural factors that affect how the native instructors want to teach their languages, to the fact that they're trying to teach last year's high school grads how to understand passages in a foreign language that cover college level topics (for instance an article about pegged and floating currencies... it made no sense to them, even once translated), the ship there has a broken rudder. And even when they have forums to try to get input, responses range from defensive counters to every point to DoD officials telling students and instructors who try to bring up valid points that they are out of line because they're not saying that DLI is doing great. Eight years and really all they've done beyond some curriculum reorganziation and cramming an extra semester in on the students' backs is to hand out iPods, and I think now laptops, to every stud. As is typical anymore, technology money rains freely down, but if you try to suggest substantive improvements it is too hard or off base.

Schmedlap
07-25-2009, 12:32 PM
An anecdote, FWIW

We had great interpreters in Baghdad in 2003. They were individuals whom we recruited ourselves off the street. I worked with several terps who were fluent in as many as six languages. One was a former Iraqi General who spoke 6 languages and knew Tariq Aziz. Another was an ex-pat who returned to Iraq from the UK, relieved that Saddam was gone. He, too, spoke 6 languages. We had several who grew up in Iraq and went to college in the UK. Another was the son of a doctor who went to medical school in California. His English was indistinguishable from that of my Soldiers, to include slang and profanity. I could go on.

We HAD great interpreters. Some worked for free, at first, because we had no means to pay them. Then their pay was eventually upped to something ridiculous, like $3 a day (which barely covered the taxi rides to and from our patrol base). But then the situation deteriorated and they were too scared to continue working with us, so in later deployments we relied on whomever Titan could recruit. That is why in OIF III I once spent 20 minutes struggling through a conversation with an Iraqi Colonel. Finally, in frustration, he started talking to me in English, pointing out that, "your interpreter is incompetent. He doesn't understand English or Arabic."

We once received an interpreter with one leg who was on crutches. You can't make this up. Here we were, an Infantry Company in a patrol base that was covered in 3 feet of dust (I mean, literally, it was like walking through a fresh snowfall) and they send us a guy on LOGPAC who can't even exit the HMMWV without someone helping him. We sent him back on the same LOGPAC. We received another "interpreter" whom we couldn't even communicate with. I don't know what languages he spoke, but English apparently wasn't one of them. I mean, he couldn't even tell us what his name was. Talking to him was more difficult than talking to an Iraqi.

Ken White
07-25-2009, 04:27 PM
for 'efficiency' and to preclude 'fraud, waste and abuse.' Effectiveness goes down the tube. The end result is almost invariably greater expense through hidden costs and unintended consequences. Plus it tends to get people killed unnecessarily... :mad:

It amazes me that Congress -- the real culprits -- are willing to trust the Schmedlaps to take the sons and daughters of their voters into combat but do not believe they can be trusted to hire interpreters, pay informers or pay for minor projects.

Actually, it isn't amazing, it's just pathetic.

My son's platoon in Iraq had a good interpreter for their whole tour. That, too was before the 'system' took over...

Brandon Friedman
07-25-2009, 04:54 PM
You guys are saying that we can't adequately hire, train, and retain our own translators. At the same time, the AP is reporting--as is IntelTrooper--that troops in the field say the contractors can't provide satisfactory interpreters, either.

This means we can't do COIN.


Not so. Just means it isn't easy and you have to work harder and get frustrated more often.

Ken, how exactly would soldiers and marines conduct COIN without competent interpreters?


We had great interpreters in Baghdad in 2003. They were individuals whom we recruited ourselves off the street. I worked with several terps who were fluent in as many as six languages. One was a former Iraqi General who spoke 6 languages and knew Tariq Aziz. Another was an ex-pat who returned to Iraq from the UK, relieved that Saddam was gone. He, too, spoke 6 languages. We had several who grew up in Iraq and went to college in the UK. Another was the son of a doctor who went to medical school in California. His English was indistinguishable from that of my Soldiers, to include slang and profanity. I could go on.

We HAD great interpreters. Some worked for free, at first, because we had no means to pay them. Then their pay was eventually upped to something ridiculous, like $3 a day (which barely covered the taxi rides to and from our patrol base). But then the situation deteriorated and they were too scared to continue working with us, so in later deployments we relied on whomever Titan could recruit.

Do we know each other? We started hiring guys off the street that April for $5 a day with cash out of our own pockets. When we left Baghdad and headed north in May, eight or nine of them came with us after we agreed to up their pay to $10 a day. But, like you said, a few would’ve accompanied us for free. By mid-summer, these guys we’d once picked up off the street in Baghdad were no longer “locals” or “Iraqis.” They were members of the unit.

As ####ed up as things were back then, it’s depressing to look back now and think those were the “good ol’ days.”

Schmedlap
07-25-2009, 05:46 PM
It amazes me that Congress -- the real culprits -- are willing to trust the Schmedlaps to take the sons and daughters of their voters into combat but do not believe they can be trusted to hire interpreters, pay informers or pay for minor projects.
Oh, I was trusted to pay them... with my own money.

Thanks to our dicked up priorities in April 2003, the powers-that-were ensured that BIAP had a Burger King and PX and that each BDE was able to dole out casual pay by the end of April ($200/month, max). Casual pay was to OIF I what CERP money is to operations today - except there was significantly less paperwork involved.

At first, I thought it was pretty stupid that we had the ability to draw casual pay (and even drive to the airport and stand in line for a Whopper) when we had no system to resupply us with such trivialities as AA batteries or potable water. But then I saw the brilliance of this. By drawing casual pay, I could buy my platoon's supplies on the local economy and do other things like pay interpreters. OIF I only cost me about $1400. It probably would have cost Uncle Sam 100 times that, due to the inefficiencies of the bureaucracy. The only downside was that batteries that you buy in Iraq are garbage. They will power your NVDs for about 30 minutes. I think they contained mercury, too.

I often blamed the mercury in the batteries when thinks didn't make sense (which was pretty much everyday). For example, our Bradleys were rolling around with track pads worn down to the metal and we were cannibalizing vehicles due to a lack of parts because the parts flow from Kuwait was cut off on the assumption that the war was over. But we could get Whoppers and DVDs if we drove to BIAP. That was just too stupid to be believed. So I would always rationalize that "we can't be that stupid. I must simply be going crazy due to exposure to the mercury in these cheapass Hajj batteries." Same thing when we were ordered to send our Bradleys back to Kuwait in May. They were racing to turn the AO into a garrison wonderland, oblivious to our continuous drumbeat of intel from the locals that "bad people are gathering in Fallujah" and "Ali Baba says that he will kill me if I talk to you" and "please stop coming to my store - I'm being threatened." I thought, "boy, the intel guys can't possibly be this thick-skulled to ignore this avalanche of corroborated, multi-sourced intel. I must be going crazy. Maybe I should stop being so cheap and pony up the extra dough for the imitation Duracells."

Brandon Friedman
07-25-2009, 06:32 PM
Oh, I was trusted to pay them... with my own money.

Thanks to our dicked up priorities in April 2003, the powers-that-were ensured that BIAP had a Burger King and PX and that each BDE was able to dole out casual pay by the end of April ($200/month, max). Casual pay was to OIF I what CERP money is to operations today - except there was significantly less paperwork involved.

At first, I thought it was pretty stupid that we had the ability to draw casual pay (and even drive to the airport and stand in line for a Whopper) when we had no system to resupply us with such trivialities as AA batteries or potable water. But then I saw the brilliance of this. By drawing casual pay, I could buy my platoon's supplies on the local economy and do other things like pay interpreters. OIF I only cost me about $1400. It probably would have cost Uncle Sam 100 times that, due to the inefficiencies of the bureaucracy. The only downside was that batteries that you buy in Iraq are garbage. They will power your NVDs for about 30 minutes. I think they contained mercury, too.

I often blamed the mercury in the batteries when thinks didn't make sense (which was pretty much everyday). For example, our Bradleys were rolling around with track pads worn down to the metal and we were cannibalizing vehicles due to a lack of parts because the parts flow from Kuwait was cut off on the assumption that the war was over. But we could get Whoppers and DVDs if we drove to BIAP. That was just too stupid to be believed. So I would always rationalize that "we can't be that stupid. I must simply be going crazy due to exposure to the mercury in these cheapass Hajj batteries." Same thing when we were ordered to send our Bradleys back to Kuwait in May. They were racing to turn the AO into a garrison wonderland, oblivious to our continuous drumbeat of intel from the locals that "bad people are gathering in Fallujah" and "Ali Baba says that he will kill me if I talk to you" and "please stop coming to my store - I'm being threatened." I thought, "boy, the intel guys can't possibly be this thick-skulled to ignore this avalanche of corroborated, multi-sourced intel. I must be going crazy. Maybe I should stop being so cheap and pony up the extra dough for the imitation Duracells."

Here's a horror story, Schmedlap: As contractors were ferrying in Burger King, etc. to the Green Zone in late summer 2003, my guys were wearing out their boots in northwest Iraq. As XO, I was working all the time trying to come up with replacements for nearly an entire infantry company. When my supply sergeant and I finally scored a delivery of several dozen boxes of desert boots, we were thrilled. Except when we opened them up for inspection, about a quarter of the boxes contained old, used pairs that had belonged to the slugs down at the BSB who'd swapped out the new ones for their old ones before sending them our way.

I can't remember exactly, but I think that was the day I decided the Army wasn't for me anymore. Thanks for helping me dredge up all these awesome memories.:rolleyes:

Ken White
07-25-2009, 07:50 PM
Ken, how exactly would soldiers and marines conduct COIN without competent interpreters?you smart, better educated guys do it today but I can ask for beer and cigarettes in seven languages. I can get rudimentary military points across in in Hangul, Spanish and Viet Namese. Used to be able to do it in Mandarin and Farsi (the latter being the only one school trained). The ones I recall a bit of were combat related, the other two were not. Now that I have my smart ass answer to your smart ass question out of the way, I will ascend to a sensible and reasonably proper answer.

They would do it with difficulty. That's not the answer, that's a step on the ascension I promised and something I mentioned earlier. :D

You make (do not suggest, make) your troops learn and use a few words by attempting to converse with locals until you meet one that wants to practice English in return for teaching you the local vernacular -- then you test what he / she says with others to insure you aren't being told that Po ji in Hangul or Coño in Spanish means "Thank You" and not something else. This is how I found out that Salope in French does not mean thank you. Then you counsel any 'teacher' who steers you incorrectly. As I said, not impossible, just makes it more difficult.

Soldiers and Marines generally will do what their leaders do and /or tell them to do. They do not need extensive training to "conduct COIN" (weird phrase, that), they just need competent, capable well trained leaders willing to train them all day every day, in combat and out -- more and harder in combat (they'll bitch but they also know what's needed and they know who's supposed to make them do what's needed...). If the kids have that, they'll do okay no matter what the mission.

I would, as an aside, point out that Soldiers and Marines do not 'conduct' COIN and that as the US has no insurgents at this time, the Army and Marines are not doing COIN work. They are doing FID and SFA work and to do that, one need host nation support or accompaniment. If the host nation is not able to provide such support (as was true in OIF 1 and part of 2) then good units will just cope and hire the best interpreters they can if there is a need -- as you and Schemdlap apparently did.

Perhaps I don't understand the problem. I know I don't see one.

Question for you: What did you do to rectify the problem with the boot substitution? i.e. whose rear echelon tail was properly put in a sling over the swapping occurring due to lack of leadership and supervision?

jmm99
07-25-2009, 10:40 PM
but something akin to the Urban Dictionary (e.g., "salope (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=salope)", which you won't find in my pocket Larousse, but in my pocket Cousin briefly), would seem useful for key words and phrases. Stan could be more intelligent on this than I. ;)

pjmunson
07-25-2009, 11:21 PM
Another thing about DLI... The regular classes refuse to teach any slang or dirty words because they say that the kids will use them in class, which is true. One of the Iraqi teachers, however, came up with a great list of insults and slang for a class to teach other Arabs to be translators in Iraq.

Why are slang and insults useful? Then you know when people are talking sh** to you and know that the situation is going south. I was walking in a crowded Arab city with a female officer, who had been to DLI. Two guys in a storefront said something about her "bzaz" (####) and turned to follow us. When I looked at them and they saw that I recognized what they were saying, they turned around. Only reason why I knew bzaz was because I had learned it from an Arab soldier after I left DLI.

Schmedlap
07-26-2009, 12:23 AM
When my supply sergeant and I finally scored a delivery of several dozen boxes of desert boots, we were thrilled. Except when we opened them up for inspection, about a quarter of the boxes contained old, used pairs that had belonged to the slugs down at the BSB who'd swapped out the new ones for their old ones before sending them our way.
We went a month without potable water. We literally lived off of the land - accepting any water from locals that was offered to us, buying water and ice thanks to the casual pay advances, sometimes driving to BIAP to steal from Division (they had not only water, but freezers, gatorade, etc). We kept griping to battalion about it. Battalion pointed out that if the FSB didn't push it, then there was nothing to give us. One day we visited the FSB. And we found our water. They were using it to do their laundry, to make water balloons, to bathe, and to clean their HMMWVs. We were black on water for nearly a month and they were using bottled water to wash their vehicles. With most of us experiencing frequent diarrhea from tainted water that seemingly no amount of chlorine or iodine could purify, I can't fully explain how angry we were upon discovering this. We asserted ownership of a pallet of bottled water and began loading it into our vehicles. A few FSB personnel - shirts still wet from a water balloon fight - protested and some unpleasantries were exchanged. My NCOs, about ready to explode, literally drew down on them with locked and loaded M4s. I jumped in between them - honestly thinking that my NCOs were going to shoot them. It was ugly.

Schmedlap
07-26-2009, 12:29 AM
Another thing about DLI... The regular classes refuse to teach any slang or dirty words...

I would also add that it is useful because most people do not speak with textbook perfect grammar. I recall a team leader telling an interpreter to "tell that a-hole to get the f out of my face and start singing. We know this s*** is here. He can show us or we can turn the f-ing s-hole upside-down."

If English is not your first language, then you might have difficulty understanding what that means, especially if it is a tense situation and you're a little flustered.

Brandon Friedman
07-26-2009, 12:34 AM
you smart, better educated guys do it today but I can ask for beer and cigarettes in seven languages. I can get rudimentary military points across in in Hangul, Spanish and Viet Namese. Used to be able to do it in Mandarin and Farsi (the latter being the only one school trained). The ones I recall a bit of were combat related, the other two were not. Now that I have my smart ass answer to your smart ass question out of the way, I will ascend to a sensible and reasonably proper answer.

They would do it with difficulty. That's not the answer, that's a step on the ascension I promised and something I mentioned earlier. :D

You make (do not suggest, make) your troops learn and use a few words by attempting to converse with locals until you meet one that wants to practice English in return for teaching you the local vernacular -- then you test what he / she says with others to insure you aren't being told that Po ji in Hangul or Coño in Spanish means "Thank You" and not something else. This is how I found out that Salope in French does not mean thank you. Then you counsel any 'teacher' who steers you incorrectly. As I said, not impossible, just makes it more difficult.

Ken, I'm not trying to smartass you, but what you're describing isn't realistic at all in Afghanistan. Getting "rudimentary military points across" is not enough. This isn't about being able to say "hello," "stop," or "thank you for the chai." Troops can already do that. It's about being able to sit down with a village leader in a man-to-man setting in order to get things straight. At those times, clear, detailed communication between U.S. troops and locals is an absolutely vital requirement in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And that's not something you can get from simply meeting people and learning some basic phrases like "what is your name" or "how much does this cost."


Question for you: What did you do to rectify the problem with the boot substitution? i.e. whose rear echelon tail was properly put in a sling over the swapping occurring due to lack of leadership and supervision?

Because it was during a period in which a lot of stuff was happening, I don't remember a whole lot about that episode, other than that I became nearly apoplectic when we opened the boxes. I showed the CO, who was similarly infuriated and we (this part is fuzzy now) got word of it to the battalion commander who made some calls. All I know is that a few days later we got some new boots. I would've gone down to the BSB personally, but we were located at a remote CP at Ayn Zalah when it happened (about 50 road miles northeast of the nearest brigade support units at the Tal Afar airfield).

Ken White
07-26-2009, 12:47 AM
as it should. You shouldn't have to do that and I have to wonder with the boots and the water, what the NCOs and Officers of the units responsible were doing -- obviously not watching what their troops were doing....

Happens in every war, though. My dad was a USN Supply officer in WW II, one day he was sitting in his Quonset on Guam when three Marines walked in with a requisition for something; a little Storekeeper 3d started giving them static and one of the Marines cranked back the bolt on his M1. Storekeeper; "Sir, he's threatening me!" Dad; "Probably ought to give him what he wants and in future avoid smarting off to armed Marines." :wry:

Not being an Officer and thus constrained, I've backed down an Ordnance Battalion XO in one war and a COSCOM 1LT and CSM in another with an implicit but not certainly not voiced threat of unseemly and inelegant firearms use in a rear area. So if it's happened in the current wars, it seems to me a permanent affliction. My solution to the problem is to eliminate those kinds of Commands. Note that both I mentioned are gone. :D

My plan is working. Now, for Sustainment Brigades... :cool:

Brandon Friedman
07-26-2009, 01:04 AM
We went a month without potable water. We literally lived off of the land - accepting any water from locals that was offered to us, buying water and ice thanks to the casual pay advances, sometimes driving to BIAP to steal from Division (they had not only water, but freezers, gatorade, etc). We kept griping to battalion about it. Battalion pointed out that if the FSB didn't push it, then there was nothing to give us. One day we visited the FSB. And we found our water. They were using it to do their laundry, to make water balloons, to bathe, and to clean their HMMWVs. We were black on water for nearly a month and they were using bottled water to wash their vehicles. With most of us experiencing frequent diarrhea from tainted water that seemingly no amount of chlorine or iodine could purify, I can't fully explain how angry we were upon discovering this. We asserted ownership of a pallet of bottled water and began loading it into our vehicles. A few FSB personnel - shirts still wet from a water balloon fight - protested and some unpleasantries were exchanged. My NCOs, about ready to explode, literally drew down on them with locked and loaded M4s. I jumped in between them - honestly thinking that my NCOs were going to shoot them. It was ugly.

For he today who fought the FSB for supplies with me
Shall be my brother;

I have walked in your shoes, dude. My first platoon had to steal water from the Air Force in Jacobabad, Pakistan. When my battalion failed to secure cots for my company at Camp New Jersey, my second platoon had to tactically acquire unused cots from Camp Doha (during a planned raid) to take with us into Iraq. And, as XO, I distinctly remember restraining myself from buttstroking a 626 FSB captain when he told me that my company couldn't be re-supplied (with things like water, etc.) because his guys didn't "work on Saturdays." It never ended. Those are just a few examples that I'm sure you can match or beat. Good fun.

Ken White
07-26-2009, 01:13 AM
Ken, I'm not trying to smartass you, but what you're describing isn't realistic at all in Afghanistan.It wasn't realistic in Viet Nam either. One does what one has to do. My son has two Infantry tours in Afghanistan, he doesn't seem to see it as a major problem.
At those times, clear, detailed communication between U.S. troops and locals is an absolutely vital requirement in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And that's not something you can get from simply meeting people and learning some basic phrases like "what is your name" or "how much does this cost."In reverse order, the basic phrase bit was in response to your comment:
"Ken, how exactly would soldiers and marines conduct COIN without competent interpreters?"You said Soldiers and Marines and I responded at that level. :confused:

Had I known you really meant "how can Companies and Battalions effectively communicate with the village Maliks or elders," I would've responded differently. That is indeed a different Ball game. My son had no big problems with interpreters at that level in either Afghanistan or in Iraq. I had and saw no problems at that level in Viet Nam as an Interpreter was made available or we could borrow one from the nearest SF Camp. While 'terp quality can certainly vary, I find it hard to believe that a Battalion cannot get a couple of really good ones and send them where needed. Ideally, we'd have US nationals, in the service, who are good enough but that is never going to happen in your lifetime, not in adequate numbers or with the educational system in the US.

In any event, after a couple of years in the ME, I'll note that whatever gets said by the folks in the village during those meetings is highly likely to be nonoperative as soon as you leave. :wry:

But, then, you know that -- and, seriously, I know it doesn't mean you don't have to try.
I showed the CO, who was similarly infuriated and we (this part is fuzzy now) got word of it to the battalion commander who made some calls...All I know is that a few days later we got some new boots.I figured as much; so something got done about it which was the important thing. Whether the Support unit fixed their internal problem can never be known; we can only hope...

My solution to that problem is to transfer the poor performers in the rear to a line unit for a while. Actually, not mine, a Regimental Commander in the 1st MarDiv -- it really worked; after about three of those; support improved by several orders of magnitude. That also has been done recently in Iraq on a back scratching deal between two Colonel commanders from different branches... :cool:

Brandon Friedman
07-26-2009, 01:54 AM
One does what one has to do. My son has two Infantry tours in Afghanistan, he doesn't seem to see it as a major problem.

We're not succeeding there, either. We'd be doing much better if we could communicate more effectively.


In reverse order, the basic phrase bit was in response to your comment:You said Soldiers and Marines and I responded at that level. :confused:

Had I known you really meant "how can Companies and Battalions effectively communicate with the village Maliks or elders," I would've responded differently. That is indeed a different Ball game. My son had no big problems with interpreters at that level in either Afghanistan or in Iraq. I had and saw no problems at that level in Viet Nam as an Interpreter was made available or we could borrow one from the nearest SF Camp. While 'terp quality can certainly vary, I find it hard to believe that a Battalion cannot get a couple of really good ones and send them where needed.

Ken, these meetings with village elders aren't necessarily taking place at the company or battalion level. Much (if not most) of the day-to-day coordinations/check-ins/negotiations with locals are done at the platoon level. Companies and battalions are spread over vast areas and platoons often have their own CPs (like at Wanat). I was out of Afghanistan before it was set up like that there, but in Iraq, my battalion was responsible for covering a 600 square-mile area (20 miles X 30 miles). As I mentioned above, at one point, my 100-man company was responsible for a rural 100 square-mile sector. We had one platoon--along with the company CP--at Ayn Zalah, we had another platoon located in the village of Bardiyah, and a third platoon in the town of Zumar--all miles apart. These platoons patrolled, met with local leaders, and, most importantly, cultivated relationships daily. Each platoon had one interpreter--the ones we'd hired and brought along from Baghdad earlier in the year--and it still wasn't enough. And the reason it wasn't enough was because patrolling squads needed an interpreter, while at the same time, the platoon CP needed one to deal with locals who approached with issues. I don't imagine it's much different from that today in Afghanistan.

Ken White
07-26-2009, 03:30 AM
As it always is. Unfortunately, I doubt there will be much improvement for a host of reasons, some good and some not. I understand the dispersion factor in Iraq and know, as you do, that the two theaters are very different. The Son was in a Rifle Platoon and had an interpreter; they worked away from the company more often than not.

However, on this, re: Afghanistan:
We're not succeeding there, either. We'd be doing much better if we could communicate more effectively.I'm not sure on the 'succeeding' and I suspect that is very much dependent on one's perception of how success in Afghanistan will look. I also believe that it'll take a few months to determine how well or how badly we're doing.

My personal belief -- and that of a few recent returnees and some there now or on the way back -- is that better communication in the sense you mean would make little real or long term difference though I acknowledge short term gains might be had. In the long term, we are highly unlikely to get some of the things all can agree would be nice and that we claim to be working toward. The Afghans from any of the ethnic or language groups with whom one converses with will be polite and very accommodating -- and really just want us and the the sagerdan gone. Both. With all allies. Next month. Today would be better...

Good COIN technique is not a ticket to success; lack of it is bad, no question, and we certainly need to know more, train better and work at it a bit -- but the best practitioner in the world is not going to beat a stacked deck. Iraq just had a couple of Jokers in there -- the 'Stan is a stacked deck.

In any event, we aren't going to solve the problem and I acknowledge the issue is problematic and also agree it should be less a problem.

goesh
08-04-2009, 03:03 PM
"It's about being able to sit down with a village leader in a man-to-man setting in order to get things straight." Brandon Friedman

Do any of these sit-downs ever occur in their mosques? If not, why not?
Do A-ghans ever invite us into their mosques for talks? Do we ever ask to talk with them in their mosques? It can be an edge - off with the boots, tell
'em there is but 1 god for all and there must be truth spoken in a holy place between men, of course they will know fast if one is a serious agnostic or simply not a believer, can't fake this with them

Tukhachevskii
08-04-2009, 08:39 PM
With regard to Arabic, a major stumbling block is that despite the pleas of operational linguists, highly experienced military language instructors, some native instructors that worked as terps or in their own militaries, and even language academics at other premier institutions, DLI institutionally refuses to move away from the complete Modern Standard Arabic model they've run for years and move toward what many call "Educated Spoken Arabic." Basically, all literate Arabs know how to read MSA and understand it spoken, so it is the language of the press, official forums, etc. If you can speak MSA, almost anyone will understand you. Problem is, most people will respond to you in some mix of dialect. DLI says we can't teach all the dialects, so we won't try at all. However, other schools and agencies recognize that there is a core of common words that a lot of the dialects share and that you can teach a "standard dialect." DLI will have none of it. So, if a DLI grad from the Arabic basic course is stellar and attains a 3/3, which is on the order of less than 10% of the graduating population, from my limited experience, they still won't understand when an Arab in any city says "What are you doing here" because all the words in that sentence differ from MSA to dialect, but they are relatively common between dialects. To give an indication of the problem, the words that vary between MSA and dialect are basic, critical words: to do, to see, to look, to go, question words, negation, now, today, tomorrow, left, go straight, man, woman, etc. If one learns the standard dialect, Arabs will still be able to go deeper into their local dialect and not be understood, but if they want to communicate with you, they will be able to. Not all Arabs can easily speak to you in MSA though, or will try to.


I agree with the above comments 100%. I went to Yemen back in 2007 because, apparently, the MSA taught their was the clearest to understand (and classes were cheaper than Egypt). I soent nigh on 9 months comming to grips with Arabic and, thanks more to my tutor than to planning, picking up valuable Yemeni dialect as we wen on our travels. Yet, for all that study (I grapled my way to upper intermediate before I had to leave) I remember travelling to the Hadramout region in the South Eastern portion of Yemen with a German friend of mine who had served in the NVA (East German/DDR) only to arrive and not undertsand ONE word that was spoken there. Often described as Yemen's "Wild West" (and that's saying something) we found ourselves dumbstruck. Even the healthy dose of dialect we had picked up only turned out to be Sana'anian dialect which is essentially "city-speak". In fact, even travelling to the next governorate found our usefully deployable vocabulary drop by fifteen percent. A one week holiday in Lebanon found me similarly at a loss when I encountered what sounded like Arabic spoken in French accents by people who wondered who the hell the village yokel was attempting to communicate with them (Yemeni, it turns out, is about a desirable an accent to have as gonnorehea).

Someguy
08-31-2009, 11:41 AM
I'm in the Pashto program at DLI. It has a terrible graduation rate from start to finish, less than 40%. The curriculum was written by non native English speakers without college degrees and the person with the education degree native language is Japanese. As a result, a student in the course will learn to say "I fly a kite" before he can count past 100.

On 1 Oct it goes to Cat IV and 63 weeks.

Presley Cannady
02-27-2010, 05:04 AM
My experience is that considerable immersion is essential to develop minimally useful language skills. So how do you teach proficiency in a language typically encountered only in a warzone?

Hint, there's no Little Afghanistan in Monterey. So why is the program located there?

40below
07-08-2010, 07:52 PM
I was often asked by gearheads about the best piece of kit the Canadian Forces had in Afghanistan, whether it was the LAVs or the C7 or the Griffons or whatnot, and I usually responded by saying the most valuable thing they had in the field were the terps. Without them, you're nothing, all you can do is shoot.

They were local hires who put themselves at great personal risk – the rules said you couldn't take their photos or include them on video you shot there, and I note with approval that the Canadian government has offered fast-track immigration to Afghans who ordinarily wouldn't qualify for citizenship if they have worked extensively with the CF and their lives are subsequently in danger.

Also, a surprising number of the soldiers had taught themselves a little Pashto, not much more than restaurant French, from a series of web-based language programs floating around. They weren't fluent but on dismount patrols, a corporal could at least say hello to the locals in the streets, and the locals seemed impressed that a soldier could at least try to address them in their own language.

Rex Brynen
07-08-2010, 08:17 PM
I was often asked by gearheads about the best piece of kit the Canadian Forces had in Afghanistan, whether it was the LAVs or the C7 or the Griffons or whatnot, and I usually responded by saying the most valuable thing they had in the field were the terps. Without them, you're nothing, all you can do is shoot.

Great comment.

Backwards Observer
07-09-2010, 05:27 AM
There was a German guy we used to travel around Malaysia with who had been partly raised by his amah (local nanny) and was fluent in kampong melayu (a vernacular form of Bahasa Malay). The locals are generally easy-going and friendly, but you occasionally would meet with mild suspicion bordering on hostility from village-folk in the hinterlands. As soon as this guy would start yakkin' away at them in the lingo, their jaws would drop, eyes would bug out, then grins, then laughter, then they'd all be shaking their hands in disbelief and asking him over for dinner.

Happened practically every time; a hundred years earlier this guy could've been a rajah puteh or some such. It helped that he really seemed to understand the local humour, and being a younger cousin of Claus Von Stauffenberg probably didn't hurt his confidence either. Still, they should've put his amah in charge of a language school.