A couple recent news items illustrate the role translators and interpreters play in politics and international security.
The Taipei Times reported that China’s President Ma Ying-jeou gave a speech last week in Tokyo to a Japanese delegation where an interpreter error soured the President’s otherwise fraternal message. Blamed on poor sound volume, a portion of the speech expressing modest goodwill came out like an arrogant command.
ABC News reported that the FBI is currently inadequately staffed to protect the United States from terror. One of the primary reasons according to the article is the “bureau’s well-publicized troubles hiring and promoting talented foreign language speakers.” The article goes on to report that FBI uses translation services exclusively to understand communications from terrorist groups, and that the lack of Arabic expertise causes “major mistakes” to be made.
Not all translators and interpreters play such geopolitical roles obviously, but as the often exclusive communication link in a lawsuit, environmental report, medical device, college application, etc., their work very often means the world.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Ryan Ginstrom // May 27, 2008 at 6:37 pm
The Translation Journal blog refers to the fact that T&I only becomes noticeable when someone makes a mistake as goalie syndrome. I tend to agree.
The FBI would probably get better translators if they paid (at least) market rates. For Japanese to English at least, their pay is far below what we can earn in the private sector.
They also have trouble hiring foreigners, people who have lived a long time overseas, and people with close relatives in certain foreign countries. That naturally makes it harder to find talent!
It’s hard to think of a good way to ease their hiring restrictions. But the pay thing should be a no-brainer.
2 Glenn // May 27, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Ryan,
Goalie syndrome — I like it. Thanks for passing it on. You’re right, the pay thing should be a no brainer but somehow the conventional thinking lumping T&I with perhaps proofreaders, data-processors, transcriptionists — or not recognizing them at all — seems to prevail.
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