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Linguist Shortage Hampers the U.S. Intelligence

Saturday, November 9, 2002 Posted: 11:46 AM EST (1646)

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) - The nation's chief information experts probably wouldn't recognize a foreign terrorist threat because they don't know the languages commonly spoken, an FBI expert said.

The FBI has hired more than 300 linguists since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but there's still a severe shortage of people in the United States who know languages used by terrorists and who can decipher intelligence, said Maragaret Gullota, chief of the FBI's Language Services Section.

"Yes, we were unprepared. We needed more linguists than we had," Gulotta told more than 500 people at the 43rd annual Conference of the American Translators Association on Friday. "The situation has improved tremendously."

Warnings of terrorist attacks may not be translated in time unless more people are hired by the nation's defense and intelligence agencies, she said.

The American Translators Association said only 614 students are not studying are now studying Pashto, Dari, Farsi and Uzbek at U.S. colleges, although 40 million people speak those languages. There's also a need for many more Arabic speakers, the group said, which more than 200 million people speak in 25 countries. "We still need a lot of people to work for us," Gulotta said. "They're not getting languages through the American school system."

Language Investment

The government commits money to language education only in a time of international crisis, and then interest lags, said Richard Brecht, Director of the National Foreign Language Center, a think tank in Washington.

"We've never made the investment," said Brecht, a panelist at the meeting.

Intelligence agencies often don't have the resources to process information fast enough, the panelist said. It wasn't until September 12, 2001, that the government was able to analyze information suggesting people with terrorist connections believed something significant would happen September 11.

More taxpayer money should be spent boosting government translators' pay so that the FBI and CIA can compete with private businesses, the panelists said. They said it's also important to promote foreign languages in American public schools.

Computer translating programs don't do the job because meaning is of often lost in translation, said moderator Kevin Hendzel. A computer couldn't pick up on code words used by terrorists speaking in a foreign language.