We still don't grasp the value of translators

[Brandon Friedman]

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.