32, no. 1 (Fall 2000): 48-49
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Working beyond the Academy:
The Federal Government
J. DAVID EDWARDS
MORE than sixty-five federal departments and agencies have language requirements, ranging from the Department of Defense to the Central Intelligence Agency to the Peace Corps to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. One indication of global shrinkage is that the number of agencies needing languages has more than doubled in the last fifteen years (Brecht and Rivers). According to the federal government, these agencies annually need to fill 34,000 positions requiring foreign language skills. Each year, a great many of these positions go unfilled or are satisfied through outside language contractors. The Department of Defense estimates conservatively that the language services industry has a yearly volume of about $20 billion (Nordin). Including the intelligence sector, the department is the largest federal employer of language personnel. The end of the cold war has increased the need for more and different languages. Since 1991, United States defense personnel have been stationed in 110 nations, not counting the NATO countries and Japan. There are 140 different languages spoken in these nations. Given that many of these positions require high-level language skills, how does the government fill them?
The federal government trains some of the linguists it needs. For example, the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, teaches 13% of all college-level language instruction in the United States (Nordin). The Foreign Service Institute educates another 2%. The two institutes account for 2,800 to 3,000 language students a year. The training is highly intensive. You eat, drink, and sleep the language for twenty-seven weeks for Spanish and sixty-three weeks for Arabic. The institutes equate this training with four years of college language study plus a study-abroad experience. If you think about it, this is a pretty good deal. You spend a year in Monterey learning a language, get an associate degree, finish your service with a bonus as a linguist, and have the rest of your tuition paid when you get out. But it also means that the Department of Defense has what it terms "disposable linguists"--after four years it loses the expertise. The government used to think it could train enough language professionals itself to meet its needs. Now it knows it can't: there are a thousand contract linguists supporting the peacekeeping force in the Balkans alone.
The federal government has learned some things, but not nearly enough. A few years ago, Congress created the Center for Advanced Language Learning (CALL). This $50 million joint project of the National Security Agency, the CIA, and the two language institutes was supposed to look at government language learning, eliminate duplication, assess needs, and interact with the academic community. It worked pretty well but succumbed to agency infighting and rivalries in 1999.
Let's talk about some of the other areas of government language needs. At the 1999 meeting of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in Dallas, there were four government agencies recruiting language professionals. One of the most active is the FBI. In recent congressional testimony, the FBI's director said that one of its single greatest needs is language expertise. Along these same lines, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has such a need for interpreters and language professionals that it is the biggest subscriber to AT&T's language line, which offers translation services. The courts desperately need good interpreters. Representative George Miller has introduced legislation to print the 2000 census in thirty-two languages, and the Bureau of the Census is going to need a boatload of "disposable linguists." The head of the Library of Congress translation division told me a few years ago that even if the printing of Japanese technical literature stopped entirely it would take the library ten years to catch up with its translating. This was despite the $5-million-a-year Japanese Technical Literature Act that Congress created to help keep up.
Some of you may remember a few years back when the CIA decided to change its image. It admitted that it existed, put up a road sign outside its headquarters, and adopted a slogan about building community. It invited a small group of us who headed education associations and worked on education legislation to its headquarters for two days of meetings and briefings. For me what came out of those meetings was a realization that the government, not just the defense and intelligence sectors, was wrestling with a new definition of national security that included greater emphasis on commerce, economics, and global competitiveness. It included a much greater recognition of the importance of cross-cultural communication and international knowledge. For example, several years ago, the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics began listing translators and interpreters with doctors, attorneys, and scientists, instead of as it used to as skilled laborers. It means that the pay has gotten better as well. The increased government interest in languages has also forced proprietary language schools such as Berlitz and Inlingua to adopt vocabulary standards so that customers know what they are getting.
Finally, I want to talk a bit about the National Security Education Program. NSEP grew out of Operation Desert Storm. After the war was over, Senator David Boren, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, held a week of closed-door hearings. The only thing to come out of the hearings was an education bill--NSEP. NSEP, originally a $150-million trust fund, provides three things: undergraduate scholarships for study abroad, graduate fellowships for study abroad, and institutional support for languages and area studies. Part of the rationale was to encourage students to go to parts of the world and learn languages that are not part of the traditional curriculum (read: not Western Europe) and to encourage students from nonlanguage disciplines like science and business to learn a language and study abroad. I recently attended a daylong symposium with the NSEP's graduate fellows. They were medical students, MBAs, economists, anthropologists, and political scientists who had spent a year or more learning the language and then working and studying in another country. Without exception, the experience changed their lives and broadened their horizons.
As my eleven-year-old son says, So what's your point? NSEP is a terrific program, but it has faced tremendous obstacles. A lot of the hawks in Congress, particularly in the House, hate it because it is an education program in the Department of Defense. They have consistently tried to eliminate the program and cut its appropriations. Some of our people in academe hate it because it is an education program in the Department of Defense. Two area studies associations, African Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, actively oppose it as a front for spies. It's not.
NSEP is a sheep in wolf's clothing. There is a reason it is in the Department of Defense. They wanted it. They saw a need for it. Initially, they were able to get $150 million for it. The government is beginning to discover its need for language and linguistic skills. That's my point. Communications among the government, business, and the academy have never been very good. But the academy has to adapt to and address the government's needs, and that's not something the academy has been willing or able to do in the past.
The author is Executive Director of the Joint National Committee for Languages and the National Council for Languages and International Studies (JNCL-NCLIS). This article is based on his presentation at the 1999 MLA convention in Chicago, Illinois.
Brecht, Richard D., and William P. Rivers. "Language Policy in the U.S.: Questions Addressing a Sea Change in Languages in the U.S." NFLC Policy Issues 2.1 (1999): 1-4.
Nordin, Glenn H. "Language and the Department of Defense: Challenges for the Twenty-First Century." NFLC Policy Issues 2.2 (1999): 1-4.
"Toward an International Education Policy for the United States." Draft policy statement by NAFSA: Assn. of Internatl. Educators and the Alliance for Internatl. Educ. and Cultural Exchange. Washington, DC. 22 Nov. 1999.
"Transforming Defense: National Security in the Twenty-First Century." Rept. of the Natl. Defense Panel. Washington, DC. Dec. 1997.
© 2001 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
ADFL Bulletin 32, no. 1 (Fall 2000): 48-49 |
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