Lost in Translation

The exchange of ideas can be a wonderful and fascinating process.  It can also be very painstaking and frustrating.  In training the new Iraqi Army, getting the message across is a very long and cumbersome process.  I spend most of my time training the Senior Officers of the General Staff of the 6th Infantry Division.  I am usually training men who are not only older than me, but of higher rank.  In this war, every soldier has to be a little bit of a diplomat sometimes.  I am now one most of the time. 

Back when I was with my Infantry Battalion, I dealt with Iraqis out on the streets from once to several times a week, but on average, most of my time was spent dealing with the soldiers of the battalion and pouring over data trying to extract actionable intelligence.  Back then, I also more often dealt with people from a position of trying to extract information, so the flow of ideas, was strictly one-way.  I was in receive mode, and my local Iraqi interpreters who had been doing the same thing in the same sector for two years, had become seasoned professionals, at knowing what I was trying to learn, helping me frame my questions appropriately, and translating the answers in the most efficient way possible given the line of questioning.

Now I am training Iraqi Colonels on the basics of American Military planning, tactics and leadership.  I am also using different interpreters.  They are all American citizen civilians, who are here one a one year contract with Titan Corporation.  Most of them are Iraqi expatriates who have lived in the US for many years, although one or two might be originally from Lebanon or Egypt.  Not only are they citizens but they have passed a security background check that is not required of the local Iraqi interpreters and are therefore given assignments such as this of a more sensitive nature.  While their english is better than most American-born college students nowadays, and their Iraqi Arabic is excellent, as civilians they do not speak military jargon very well.  As I struggle to learn the small amount of arabic that I have, they struggle to translate two languages into "militar-ese." 

The process of communicating as a teacher rather than an inquisitor-diplomat is much more challenging.  What would be a 2 minute converation between two english-speaking military officers or a 15 minute coversation working in an infantry unit through a local interpreter, becomes a 45 minute coversation going from english to arabic and back again through a civilian interpeter.  The process goes something like this:

American Officer tries to translate American militar-ese into english to his interpreter.

Interpreter translates the english translation into Iraqi arabic.

Iraqi Officer tries to translate the Iraqi arabic into Iraqi militar-ese.

This process is obviously not complete with only one volley, as each turn provokes questions and clarifications that are not only linguistic, but cultural.  The Iraqi military also has it's own way of doing things that is a whole other subject unto itself for another post.  The bottom line is that nothing in this process that the US military finds itself engaged in here is easy.  A two-page document translated from english into arabic still required a 90 minute conversation with one of the Staff Colonels here before he understood it, and it was already in his language.  I need to spend less time sleeping and more time studying arabic...

Comments

[Chevy Rose]

It sounds sort of like herding cats, very tedious. Take care, get sleep too.

[Toni]

Sounds worse than herding cats to me CR. Maybe herding cats with dogs chasing them. :)

[Granma Ruth]

I'm exhausted just thinking about the process.
I once tried to hold a conversation with a mother who was deaf from birth and tried to talk. Her children would come when she snapped her fingers and translate. I went home exhausted. But I really admired how disciplined her children were.

[Lou]

I once spent several weeks in a small village in Italy where no one spoke English. Communication was frustrating, but often entertaining. Fortunately, our word "beer" is very similar in Italian.

[Dan]

Yep. I started to learn Arabic once to communicate with some guys at work in their native tongue. I could handle reading backwards but that cursive alphabet and textbook instructions like "English speakers only make this sound when choking" caused me to through in the towel.

Give it your best shot. Good luck and en-joy.

Thank you for your service!

---Dan

[Dan]

PS
I suppose the best way is to learn simple phrases to and use these until they are mastered. Such phrases may include things like: "Clode the door. Sit down. Are you thirsty."

Thanks again.

---Dan

[Basha]

Sounds to me like your preparing for parenthood. I just got done translating from "9" year old to medical-ese, with a "cellular" stop in business-tounge to my husband.

My solution, keep it simple & straight forward, keeping the hand gestures to myself.

[Bert]

"Clode the door" Dan ?. ;-)

[Lucy K]

You did a great job in Mexico City, no one would ever know it was your first time there. I can still remember the laughter from the jokes you told (sin traduccion). Be well..I love you!

[PebblePie]

Here take a tiny break:

http://home.ripway.com/2005-8/406154/New%20Mouse/NewMouse.wmv

[Ben]

I am an Arabic linguist for the Army. The whole program needs reworking. What I was taught in school was the Arabic spoken on the news and written in the newspapers. But it is not what Iraqis speak in their daily dialect. So coming over here, linguists are woefully underprepared.

The thing is that it's easier to hire on native speakers than it is to train up soldiers to get to that level of proficiency.

But along with that, you'll need soldiers who are taught or at least familiarized with the culture and the language. And this makes me wonder if it should be treated more like a basic soldier (or officer) skill to know a target language/culture. There's hardly enough time for training as it is, so that would be a difficult plan to implement.

But I think we need to start approaching language and culture from different angles in the military, because it's such a huge impediment to our operations, as Major K. described.

[jj mollo]

We need to start taking languages more seriously in the US. We should be teaching kids a much greater variety of languages. For instance, a given high school might specialize in Urdu rather than splitting its resources into Latin, French, German, Spanish. The Social Studies courses could be coordinated. Each high school could have a couple of foreign cities to study in detail rather than getting the usual background in geography and cultures which is a mile wide and an inch deep. The individual would know something substantial, and the population would collectively have a diverse background.