Intelligence: Must Have More Translators

Archives

December 21, 2005: Yet another program is under way to obtain more translators capable of dealing with Arabic, Russian or Chinese for the U.S. government. The U.S. Department of Defense has established the EHLS (English for Heritage Language Speakers) program for native speakers of these languages, living in the U.S., who lack the English language skills to be effective translators. The program involves a government paid, six month (720 hour) intensive course that improves the students English language skills, while also showing them U.S. government procedures and techniques for doing translation. For the first year of EHLS, the government is putting up $2 million. Those who successfully finish EHLS will be offered translating jobs with the U.S. government, but the students are under no legal obligation to take any of those jobs. However, those who speak one of the needed foreign languages as their native language, and express interest in a government translator job, will be given priority in getting into the EHLS program. If the initial EHLS students do well, the program will be expanded. The Department of Defense currently has a shortage of translators able to handle Arabic, Persian, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Pashto, Urdu and Korean.

 

X

ad

Help Keep Us From Drying Up

We need your help! Our subscription base has slowly been dwindling.

Each month we count on your contributions. You can support us in the following ways:

  1. Make sure you spread the word about us. Two ways to do that are to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
  2. Subscribe to our daily newsletter. We’ll send the news to your email box, and you don’t have to come to the site unless you want to read columns or see photos.
  3. You can contribute to the health of StrategyPage.
Subscribe   Contribute   Close