U.S. turns to technology for translators in Iraq

[aka_tom_w]

web page usa today link

This should be OLD news?

Why didn't someone think of this about 5 years ago?

This should not be that hard ?........

Intelligence agencies and the military are turning to technology developed for call centers, sporting events and television shopping channels to compensate for an ongoing shortage of qualified translators, interviews and public documents show.

In Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the Defense Department's research arm is testing portable translation devices that allow English-speaking soldiers to hold conversations with Iraqis.

MORE: Military tests portable translators

Government-backed researchers are working to convert broadcasts and website postings from Arabic and Mandarin Chinese into English and to build search engines that can extract complex information from the translated texts.

These efforts are part of a government plan to bolster the thin ranks of skilled translators, say researchers and experts, so human translators can focus on more demanding projects.

"Human language specialists are precious assets," says John Hall, a former Navy SEAL who is president of VoxTec International. The Annapolis, Md., company makes a handheld translation device being tested in Iraq. "You're never going to have enough of them," Hall says. "But if a machine can do some basic tasks, that frees up (a translator) for other work."

In-Q-Tel, a venture-capital company funded by the CIA, has invested in a company that produces software that helps private companies glean information from recorded customer-service calls.

The technology could help intelligence analysts decipher subtleties, such as differences in accents and pronunciations, that can change the meanings of spoken words, its makers say.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Yay! More gadgets to haul around.

Somehow I feel that using locals may be more beneficial, at least long term. Probably strengthens local ties with the community and puts some much needed extra coin into the local economy. And given the way the DoD is spending money on gadgets I have an inkling it might be cheaper too.

[MikeyD]

In CMSF, among the ammo supplies hauled in Strykers (I think BFC had mentioned something about this) I think there should be spare batteries to pick up too. in a night scenario for example, what proportion of night vision goggles should be in working order at the start of the game and what proportion should be expected to still be operating at the end? (This isn't a rhetorical question, what is the battery lifespan on those things?) And should a team be allowed to scamper back to their vehicle to pick up a battery "Health Crystal" from the back, then return to the fight with goggles back working again?

Battery-powered warfare certainly does pose its own peculiar problems.

[Holman]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

Why didn't someone think of this about 5 years ago?

This should not be that hard ?........

Five years ago the Pentagon was still too busy firing the Arabic translators they had. Why? Because they were gay.

[Bigduke6]

You want to know what the problem is? Here's the problem, buried at the bottom of the USAToday article:

"This month, the Iraq Study Group reported that only 33 of 1,000 workers in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad speak Arabic, including only six fluent speakers."

followed by

In October, the FBI reported that only 33 of about 12,000 agents have even limited Arabic proficiency.

The CIA does not disclose its officers' language capabilities, but Robert Baer, a retired CIA agent, estimates that he was the agency's only undercover officer fluent in Arabic when he operated in Beirut in the mid-1980s.

[ December 21, 2006, 01:40 AM: Message edited by: Bigduke6 ]

[RSColonel_131st]

You guys have been bombing arabian speaking countrys for 5 years now. It's kinda hard to fathom that no one managed to recruit or train more people fluent in arabic during that timespan...

[MikeyD]

"It's kinda hard to fathom..."

After the last 5-6 years that phrase should be engraved on the dollar bill!

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by RSColonel_131st:

You guys have been bombing arabian speaking countrys for 5 years now. It's kinda hard to fathom that no one managed to recruit or train more people fluent in arabic during that timespan...

That is sort of interesting

Maybe when you look at it the decision was made (from the top down somewhere) that it is easier to bomb them then talk to them?

Think about it...

-tom w

[Splinty]

It's not quite that bad guys, my battalion alone has at least 20 translators assigned to it. You shouldn't believe evrything you read in the American press.

[offtaskagain]

Yeah for sure. Some people may be suprised by this, but we also plan ahead and bring spare batteries. NVGs last a long time on their AAs, certainly longer than a single night. Radios don't last as long, but everybody with a man pack radio will carry a spare or two.

[PLM2]

Theyve got an awful lot of arabic speaking Americans in the deserts of Ft Irwin National training center playing as Iraqis living in villages. The unit doing the rotation also had some pretty hot contractor translaters.

[Battlefront.com]

The problem is... the fewer people you have doing translation work, the less you can translate and the longer it takes. It also took the US several years to get enough translators to get the most basic level of coverage. In the initial OIF phase the lack of understanding of Iraqi culture, habits, and language lead to some ugly incidents and could have produced even more. The AARs and Lessons Learned reports were full of examples. So while it's great to hear things are better now, US forces should have been at this level (at least) BEFORE commencing combat ops. But then again, the US should have done a lot of things before then

Steve

[Holman]

Originally posted by Splinty:

It's not quite that bad guys, my battalion alone has at least 20 translators assigned to it. You shouldn't believe evrything you read in the American press.

Were these Americans who knew Arabic, or were they Iraqis working for the American forces? I hear there's a difference.

[John Kettler]

In the book GENERATION KILL, an incompetent officer? during OIF managed to not bring spare batteries as he was supposed to, leaving the unit severely degraded in night ops, since use had to be only for short intervals.

Suvorov/Rezun in one of his books indicated that the Spetsnaz was likely to soon have a barebones translator specifically focused on EEIs, rather than relying on a list of pointouts on a silk hankie. Given some of the translation gear available at Broookstone, etc., I'd expect that the U.S. would have had something similar long since. Soldier keys "Ali Waleed where?" and terminal displays question in Arabic. With even a basic menu of responses for the local to choose from, the average GI's way ahead in the game when compared to having no Arabic and no translator.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Splinty]

Martyr, Iraqis working for us.

[nijis]

I don't know where your unit was, Splinty, but I've been embedded as a journalist in a lot of areas where the translator shortage is pretty crippling. One Marine battalion in Anbar had maybe 1-2 Iraqi translators per company-sized FOB, and many of them didn't really speak English, communicating with the Americans based on pidgin and charades. (One officer at the TOC compared their non-Anglophone translator to "an M-16 which doesn't shoot 5.56 bullets"). I've also been on a company-sized patrol of villages around Mosul, where the idea was to make contact with local village sheikhs, and the US forces did not have a single translator.

All in all, I'd estimate that about a quarter to a third of the battalion AOs where I've been embedded regularly sent out patrols with non-existent or functionally non-existent translation. These are all missions where the objective is to get to know the surrounding area and cultivate contacts with the locals, and communication is integral to the mission. If you throw in raids, traffic control points or other missions where a translator is not absolutely essential but could come in very handy, I'd guess that the proportion that go out without a translator is even higher.

[ December 25, 2006, 02:34 AM: Message edited by: nijis ]

[Splinty]

Nijis, I'm currently an MP at Rustamiyah, on the southeast side of Baghdad. Most missions we have 2 translators or "terps" go with us. That's a normal 12 person MP squad.

[Battlefront.com]

Ah... I see the problem. Splinty and his buddies are hogging up all the translators

Steve

[nijis]

That's interesting. In August I was with a cav unit of the 101st which I recall was based in Rustamiya. I think that they had one translator per platoon on patrol, which was enough for the job but not quite so many as that. The last time I was with a unit which had a severe terp shortage was in Anbar in April. Maybe it's easier to get translators who will work in east Baghdad than out in western Anbar, or maybe the military has prioritized the problem and managed to recruit more terps. We press folks are far more likely to notice when a problem crops up then when it gets fixed.

The de-Sunnification of mixed areas in the capital may also make Shia less frightened of suspected insurgents in their midst. (I've heard that the Mahdi Army has a slightly more relaxed policy on working with the Americans -- they'll ostracize you but not shoot you outright. That policy probably varies from district to district, though). An Iraqi colleage also tells me that two of the neighborhoods next to the Rustamiya base (Jurf al-Diyaf, part of Jisr Diyala, and Alaf Dar, part of Baghdad al-Jadida) are solidly pro-Sistani, which might make a big difference.

Stay safe in east Baghdad, Splinty.

[ December 26, 2006, 02:21 AM: Message edited by: nijis ]

[Slapdragon's Ghost]

When I was at DOJ they had a classified problem with translation which was hysterical, but unfortunately cannot be discussed.

One thing that can be discussed is the problem with unreliable tranlators, and it was a serious problem. The DOJ goes haring out across the US for translators, competing with every other agency, after the towers fell. They actually find a passle of them.

I wish I knew the real numbers, but background checks cut a cast of thousands to a cast of something like 8. This one had a brother who was fighting Israel. This one read Jihad magazine. This one wrote a paper advocating terrorism in college.

And before people say, well, background checks are paranoid, they are actually very important, and lots of americans could not pass a standard background check to work with confidential law enforcement material. You cannot read minds, but you can look at what they do and have done and use that as a pretty accurate barometer. Most spies end up to be people who would not have passed background checks, if only we had known about something in their past that was missed.

A lot of translator solutions have been tried also and are no good. French and Israeli services have quite large translation staffs, but if you borrow one they are just as likely to be spying on you as they are to be translating - even your allies will put a spy in your agencies if you do not watch out. Academics can be called in to serve, but the background checks are again tough, and on ocassion an academic was found to be mistranslating purposefully, or because they are just not good with the language they claim to be expert in..

[Slapdragon's Ghost]

My own translation fiasco:

Every cop should speak spanish. In Richland County the major chicken plants, several factories, and major discount retailers employed thousands of illegals whose actions would be overlooked in Mexico, but who sometimes cross the US line of behavior. And few speak good English. (Drunk driving was a biggie, as was domestic violence. Both would be ignored more or less in rural Mexico, in the US it gets taken seriously and people can get very fighty when you arrest them if they do not understsnd why.)

So I know two romance languages well enough to get by, and my partner, from PR, is fluent even in idioms. One day we pull over a car full of guys, find a crack pipe, then some crack. Everyone one of these guys in this car, and their was like 8 of them, will be going to jail for a good long time unless we can get one person to claim it and let his buddies off the hook.

So I ask, while Gonzalas listens, "¿Quién posee esta pipa de la grieta?" Technically, my idiom is wrong and I do not have the right slang, but someone who speaks Spanish will get the message.

These guys mumbles some words I do not understand and look at each other, and Gonzalas looks really confused. I think it is my terrible spanish which is causing the problem, or maybe, as I often do, I drifted into portenol. So I wave the pipe and say, "¿pipa de la droga?" They look at each other and mutter things to each other and Gonzalas looks even more confused, which makes me think he is just being polite and not correcting me.

"¿fumar narcótico?" "feliz feliz el smoko de estimulante" then I started to loose my spanish all together and said something like, "uno demanda lo o cada uno para encarcelar." Or at least that is what the report said I said.

Then Gonzalas says, "estop Esteve". And I say, "what the hell?" And he says, "they do not speak Spanish."

Turns out that they speak Mixtec, except for one who speaks some language called Chol, and they do not, oddly enough, speak Spanish. So we call INS and tell them we have 8 illegals who speak something other than Spanish and they say, "good luck, might as well release them because you will never get them tried." And we call like 8 universities in the US with Mexican indigenes language professors, and none of the professors actually speak any of the languages they teach about. And we call the Mexican embassy and they say, "good luck, we cannot talk to them either and do not have the budget to hire someone even if they can be found."

I never found out what happened to those guys, but no one in the US, to my knowledge, who works for any LEA, has anyway to speak to them.