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.