Originally Posted by
Ken White
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
Bookmarks