I remember a Jewish friend (secular and left-wing, admittedly, and Chinese/Malay-Jewish in ethnicity) commenting to me upon reading one of bin Laden's long "addresses to the American public" in which bin Laden described seeing shells from the warship New Jersey striking (still-populated) apartment buildings in southern Lebanon, and promising himself that he would "make the Americans taste of their own blood and tears, as they had" - and saying that he, though horrified at what bin Laden did, felt sympathy towards that sentiment...

believing your enemy to be incompetent and backwards, while simultaneously imagining him to be powerful and demonically devious - is in the nature of extreme nationalism. Being unable to see your enemy clearly (and respect his strengths) means you cannot combat him appropriately, as Sun Tzu noted almost 2500 years ago.

See Umberto Eco's article on 'Ur-Fascism'-
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/bb/index.php?showtopic=18184

8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.

When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.

and it must be admitted, by those who oppose bin Laden, that he and his cronies are able to use eloquent Arabic, and use images and media to great effect - one CIA agent responsible for monitoring "as-Sahab" ('the Clouds' - the al-Qaeda video production squad) was quoted [via www.warincontext.org] said of "the Power of Truth" [ video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7640391762317259 ]040&hl=en
that many of its arguments to its' target audience were inarguable (I understand him to mean politically and emotionally direct), and much more powerful than American counter-propaganda

That admitting this takes so much effort, from a Presidency which disturbingly mirrors bin Laden in many tragic ways (a weak leader, incompetent in many ways and ultimately destroying both the cause and organization which he leads, nonetheless remains 'on message' and has a powerful media network - Bush has FOX, al-Qaeda has as-Sahab and jihadi web pages) -

That irony makes me think of that infamous Boondocks cartoon, of the Thanksgiving Day prayer by Huey Freeman:
"Ahem," he begins. "In this time of war against Osama bin Laden and the oppressive Taliban regime, we are thankful that our leader isn't the spoiled son of a powerful politician from a wealthy oil family who is supported by religious fundamentalists, operates through clandestine organizations, has no respect for the democratic electoral process, bombs innocents, and uses war to deny people their civil liberties. Amen."

Dear MH,

Didn't you know that they use Google Translate? Having human translators is sooo 20th century ...

--MSK*

I don't usually read American newspapers, but is that sort of thing really that common? It just seems odd. Are you sure he wrote in Arabic? your link doesn't mention that he did.

My own pet peeve is the accented English voice-overs whenever someone is talking in Arabic on news reports. Don't they realise how ridiculous that looks?

My own pet peeve is the accented English voice-overs whenever someone is talking in Arabic on news reports.

Amen to that; another and related pet peeve. They are not speaking in foreign accent in their own languages (in some cases, perhaps). (Actually I had the opportunity to round up people for just such a accented translation request (yes, they requested accents, not merely an accident of translator ability), via a major news outfit, for a voice-over; I cooperated only because the folks doing it would have made really good money but I passed the request along with a visible grimace and eye roll.)

KSM translation -- from the article -- the full sentence, which I edited out as redundant:

. . . Mohammed wrote, according to a translation from his original Arabic that was provided to the jurors. . .

I don't usually read American newspapers, but is that sort of thing really that common?

Constant, somewhere I have a hard copy file of them.

Consider the prevalance of Saddam's "mother of all battles"; I do suspect he said something that probably should have been rendered "the mother battle" or "the principle battle" or even the "main" battle.

Another I can think of is when Qaddafi once called Reagan "Israel's watchdog" and it got translated that Qaddafi said Reagan was "an Israeli dog".

Indirectly related, 10 years old, but still so current:

http://www.geocities.com/aamirror/english.htm

Similar negative reinforcement, indeed.

Ah, Ali K. beat me to it: "My own pet peeve is the accented English voice-overs whenever someone is talking in Arabic on news reports."

Yes, yes, yes. I hate that with a passion. And not just Arabic. The worst, most disgusting part is when it's some language they can't possibly have a native speaker for at the channel, and that virtually no viewer would know the proper accent for -- say, like some Nilo-Saharan dialect out of Darfur. Then there is NO informational purpose, and adding accent can ONLY be to reinforce a preconceived idea about how the speaker is supposed to sound judging from his/her looks: English dumbed down by a "generic African" accent, to make that nigger talk like a nigger. How this sort of racist stereotyping can be acceptable in mainstream media is completely beyond me.

So a question: where is it common? Only in Anglophone countries, or only in the US? Can't remember hearing it on the BBC, but maybe they do it too. Arabic channels also tend to read translations, but they don't intentionally mangle anything said by an American by adding a fake Texas drawl; neither, as far as I recall from rare occasions of watching it, does French TV. Scandinavian channels will almost invariably text their translations. Other languages, don't know.

Matthew Hogan,

For some, a competent translation of Arabic may not be the problem at all. For some it is Arabic itself and its inability to communicate effectively:

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/08/03/avoiding-the-issue-part-2/

Bikhair-

I'm not sure what you are trying to argue here. That post is less a condemnation of the Arabic language itself than of the Arabic media. Two different things entirely.

Arabic, like any other natural language, is not purposefully designed to be vague and obscure.

Bikhair-

I'm not sure what you are trying to argue here. That post is less a condemnation of the Arabic language itself than of the Arabic media. Two different things entirely.

Arabic, like any other natural language, is not purposefully designed to be vague and obscure.

"For some, a competent translation of Arabic may not be the problem at all. For some it is Arabic itself and its inability to communicate effectively:"

Yeah sure, right. It causes translators to misspell personnel, to use the wrong conjunction(?) (as, like), and to forget a definite article, even though one exists in Arabic.

Amazingly powerful language to do that.

“As the American Army (we) have drivers, cooks, crewmen and legal personal,” Mohammed wrote. . . "We also, are human beings ... we have interests in life. ...You can not understand terrorism and Al-Qaida from 9/11 operation.”

Yes, that is pretty bad. The MEMRI translation was much better,

"We are fully organized to resist the crusader armies and crush all those who mock Allah. Unlike them, we are human beings and we are completely committed to jihad. You infidel dogs understand nothing."

But bad legal translations are a fact of life at all levels. A few years ago, I read a report of a semi-famous murder trial. A spanish speaker was testifying through an interpreter.

"I felt a shot, then I felt another shot. Then I didn't feel anything else."

A reasonable translation, had the witness been the victim. The witness, however, was a neighbor who had only heard the shooting. But spanish has a word that can mean both "hear" and "feel." One guess what the proper translation should have been.

There's something more to this that I don't quite understand. I've taken 3 years of Arabic, and I'm by no means at the level translators are supposed to be at. But when I translate things like al-Jazeera online reports and the like, just reading it out loud corrects the obvious mistakes that one makes in translating each word singularly (which these translators are supposed to be above anyway!)

They really are finding morons to do their translating, and you're right - it's a huge problem.

Ali K,

I'm not trying to argue anything. I didnt go that far in my Arabic studies to make any case about how Arabic is communicated. I thought it was rather sinister to make judgement about the pysche of a people based upon the strictures or lack there of in their language.

"I felt a shot, then I felt another shot. Then I didn't feel anything else."

That's almost poetic especially if the victim.

I'd cut tiny slack if it was a SIMULTANEOUS translation as it appeared to be.

The key to translation is that the translator should be a native or natively fluent speaker of the language being translated INTO (ideally both of course), and if written, it must undergo a more intense edit than normal prose.

Speaking from my previosu professional experience as a court interpreter, a few observations:

-- even the most well-meaning interpreter can run into obscure idioms or dialectical differences;

-- even the most bilingual person can have an impenetrably thick accent in the target language;

-- even the most bilingual person can trip on a false cognate now and again;

-- the most bilingual person does not necessarily make the best interpreter; the mere fact of being bilingual does not automatically mean a person has the best skills at accurately conveying the proper tone, register, sentence structure, etc. from the source to the target language, or the best short-term verbal retention skills;

-- most educated bilingual people are not in the field of translation/interpreting; and

-- sometimes with interpreters, you get what you pay for. (The Feds, when I was working for them, classified entry-level interpreters with a college degree on the same salary scale as, say, a monolingual receptionist with a year's experience - GS-5, for those in the know.)

So yeah, many people who might otherwise make good interpreters are inclined to choose other lines of work. And don't start me on the practice of dismissing qualified linguists because of their sexual preference.

(I don't speak a lick of Arabic, so I can't say what the specific issue was with the interpreter in question. But even in the language I was dealing with, which has many millions of speakers in the U.S., we certainly have issues with interpretation quality in Federal service.)

EL --

In this case, it was a written translation of written words of a high profile witness in a history-making trial (plenty of time to edit). The English wasn't even basic competency level. And no one comments and it is passed along verbatim. I understand fast translations of spoken witnesses and am familiar with certain agencies you know of and have even caused a translator to be replaced for incoherently representing a witness. But I have also seen solid subtleties translated by professionals in the same forum in real time.

Bush, whatever one thinks of him, once used the phrase "the soft bigotry of low expectations" in another context. In the case of chronic retarded Arabic translations, that phrase is dead on in describing the state of things; not just the normal pattern of limited availability of translation competence in general.

In answer to Alle's question (Aug. 3 at 9:57 pm),
"where is it common? Only in Anglophone countries, or only in the US?"

All I can tell you is that here in Brazil, where virtually all international news soundbites are voiceovered, I have never, ever, heard the VO done in foreign-accented Portuguese. I don't think the idea has ever crossed anybody's mind.

I didn't know until this moment that some U.S. broadcasters have been playing this grotesque trick on their listeners/viewers. How pathetic.

It does remind me, however, that a few years ago some Laurel and Hardy films were shown on French televison where the dubbed voices are done with thick English accents. Very effective, very funny.

Sorry, I didn't mean to post that four times. Do we have a moderator who could remove three of them?

Thanks.
JC

Hey Matt,

I would like to send you a review copy of The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony by Stephen Schwartz (on sale 9/16). Please email me your mailing address if you are interested.

Thanks!

Kelli

JC: I'll get around to it perhaps mate.

Kelli: you did not provide an actual email address. [EDITED TO ADD: Ah bollocks, in entering Admin mode I see you did, okay, this is off to Mr. Hogan then, pls do copy the Admins, right? That would be me].

I guess having worked around US military translators when I was with the Department of Defense I can provide a bit of insight here.

First you must keep in mind that the students who later become translators go through a full time school that lasts about 18 months.

18 months might be enough time to come close to mastering a language like German that is very similar to English, but it is not nearly enough time to master a language like Arabic.

The school emphasises MSA/fus7a/classical Arabic. This is a great grounding for the Arabic language, but it does you little good unless you have another couple of years to tack onto that learning dialect.

The plain fact is that knowledge of only classical Arabic will leave you lost on the "Arab street". People just do not speak that way.

Also, most military linguists are required to have a "back up language". Amoungst the military linguists that I knew whose primary language was Arabic; their back up language was Hebrew. So not only are you required to learn a VERY hard language like Arabic in 18 months, you must also be proficient in Hebrew.

The practical affect is that you get a bunch of Arabic linguists who are unable to translate on a real time basis. The fact that most of the rank and file linguists do not have a college degree means that their command of English may not always be all that great either.

I admit that my knowledge of Arabic has improved a lot since I was with the DoD, but I never attended the schooling that they did and at times my knowledge of Arabic, especially dialect, was far superior, and that was 7 years ago.

The problem was SO bad that when the US forces entered Iraq in 2003 their translators were basically useless. I guess someone forgot to explain that Iraqi Arabic is a bit different than practicing reading Asharq al Awsat.

That was a boone for American citizens who were also native Arabic speakers who were hired on by US contractors and paid $120,000 a year to translate for US forces.

Abu Sinan: out of curiosity, do you know to what extent the military makes special efforts to retain people with language/area stues knowledge? I ask because my (Russian/East European Studies) grad program always had at least a few active military people enrolled, all of whom had previous intensive language training and most of whom at least had the intent to be career military, but personal communications and alumni newsletters suggest that their language skills were not always used in their post-grad school military assignments, and one guy who finished coursework at the same time I did was bumped out of active duty to the Reserves right after the Army had just paid to put him through grad school.

@EL,

It all depends on what your job is in the military. For years there was almost a glut of Russian speakers. I dont know if this is still the case so even someone with decent Russian skills might not have been used as a linguist.

I got out of the DoD pre 9/11, but it is safe to say that if you have Arabic/Urdu/Farsi ability now you could probably get into a linguistics spot no matter your previous job.

As to keeping them, that is hard. A capable Arabic linguist can make $100,000 a year in the civilian world, much more if you have an active security clearance.

All branches of the military have enacted rather generous reenlistment bonus, sometimes $30,000 plus for signing up for another 6 year tour, but when you consider that they could make that much more in one year in the private sector it makes it hard.

The military does make a lot of stupid mistakes and get rid of people they need, like you point out, even people that they just educated.

The problem with a language like Arabic is that even once they put you through the intensive schools they have you will still require a lot of post schooling work on grammar and dialect. The only dialect experience that would really help is being posted in the Middle East. The State Department is known for doing that to help it's people get more experience.

Personally I think the only way they will ever get past the problem with languages from the Muslim world is to actually create the situation where more native speakers are willing to help the US government.

My wife and her sisters are good examples. They are all native speaking Arabs with graduate degrees from here in the USA. They would LOVE to work for the US to fight groups like AQ. Their problem is that the US just isnt fighting AQ, they are working agaisnt groups that my wife and her sisters would not be so comfortable working against, namely Palestinian groups.

The US has bought into the Israeli argument that their fight is the same as the fight against AQ. We dont think that is true.

So until this changes the vast majority of native speakers of these languages will not work to help the USA.

Hmmm...now you have me curious about the alums of a related/overlapping program (M.A. in Central Eurasian Studies). They taught a number of languages of strategic military significance in the Muslim world (Uzbek and other Central Asian languages) and also usually had a few active military folks.

news story of relevance:

Washington - The Army may begin paying a retention bonus of as much as $150,000 to Arabic speaking soldiers in reflection of how critical it has become for the US military to retain native language and cultural know-how in its ranks.

Only one other job in the Army, Special Forces, rates such a super-sized retention bonus. Now, as the military makes a fundamental shift toward rewarding the linguistic expertise it needs the most, it is expanding a program to train and retain native Arabic and other speakers from the same regions in which it is fighting.

"This is a war not only against the US, but against our way of freedom," says Sergeant Madi, a native interpreter and US citizen who asked to be identified only by his surname due to security concerns for him and his family. "We have been fighting for over 16 years against Islamic extremism. It is also my war."

After the invasion of Iraq and the insurgency that followed, the US military recognized its dearth of linguistic competence in the country it had just toppled, and it scrambled to identify Arabic and other linguists.

The military's conventional language training program, the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., could not churn out enough American soldiers proficient in Arabic, Kurdish, Dari, Pashtu, and Farsi, and the military quickly turned to private contractors to fill the gap. Numerous programs have sprouted up, including one at Fort Lewis, Wash., where soldiers are given a 10-month immersion program in language and culture.

But the Army has also been quietly growing its own capability to recruit and train Arab-Americans and others as American soldiers to do high-level work overseas. The Army now has more than 600 such linguists, known by their military job designation as "09 Limas."

They come from places like Morocco, Egypt, and Sudan, but are recruited by the Army wherever there are large Arab-American populations, including Dearborn, Mich.; Miami; Dallas; Los Angeles; and Washington, D.C.

The Defense Department is now authorized to put green-card holders on a fast track to US citizenship. The 09 Lima linguists are in so much demand that the Army is raising the number it will recruit next year, from 250 to 275.

But as the US government recognizes the long-term commitment it is making to Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, the competition for these native speakers is fierce among other government agencies such as the FBI and CIA, as well as other military services and private contractors.

Army personnel officials want to put the 09 Lima retention program on par with Army Special Forces, which would mean paying those linguists as much as $150,000 each to stay in the service. The Army implemented the bonus program for Special Forces in 2005 after it watched the highly trained soldiers being lured by lucrative deals offered by such firms as Blackwater USA. That bonus, which is tax-free if paid in a war zone, helped to stabilize that community.

The Army has yet to decide if the 09 Limas will rate the same pay, but defense officials say it's important to put linguists on par with the "high-demand, low-density" nature of Special Forces.

"We've received numerous reports from combatant commanders on the effectiveness of the 09 Limas versus the private contract linguists, and demand is extremely high," says Errol Smith, assistant deputy secretary for foreign language programs at the Pentagon.

The program represents the shift within the US government toward recognizing the value of native linguists while determining how best to assess any Trojan horse-like security threat they might pose. Mike McConnell, director of national security, is pushing to streamline the screening process.

"We have to make some breakthroughs on how we assign, trust, assess, and utilize those who have direct contact with foreign entities," says one source familiar with Mr. McConnell's plan. "That unfolding story carries a lot of implications with it, and it's a huge cultural shift for the entire nation."

Thanks for the article Dawud. When I was in the DoD the highest retention bonus was in the $30,000 range, but that was back in 2001, pre-9/11.

The Monterey school doesnt turn out people who are proficient, that is the problem. The army had a lot of such people on the ground in Iraq when they invaded and they were lost.

There really is no replacing native speakers. 90% of the graduates from the Monterey school are really good for nothing more than translating written material and for transcribing tapes that they can listen to over and over again with a dictionary in hand. Even then the translations will be crap. Materials found needing further scrutiny will be passed onto native speakers.

A such move towards putting together a force of non native speakers will require a couple of decades to really get up and running and require years and years of schooling beyond any sort of institute like Monterey.

Interestingly enough, when I was taking advanced Arabic grammer when it used to be offered here in Northern Virginia by a Saudi funded organisation, we had government employees taking these classes.

What these people would need is the 18 month class in CA, or a four year Arabic degree, plus advanced grammer studies at an Arabic institute, and several years living abroad. This is how the state department does it and they still only have only a few level 5 Arabic speakers.

I would see the goal as training these sorts of people to go the grunt work working on signal intercepts and other similar things and leave the rest to native speakers.

They have a system that red flags conversations looking for certain words and phrases. These are recorded and set aside to be listened to later. There are thousands and thousands of hours of these conversations sitting around waiting for one of these Montery graduates to attemp.