Ed Brayton is a freelance writer and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Pentagon is so concerned about the lack of Arabic translators undermining their ability to fight the war on terror that they may start offering huge bonuses to keep the ones they've got:
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.
Here's more:
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.
Gee, maybe you wouldn't be in this position if you hadn't discharged dozens of gay and lesbian Arabic translators.
Politics
Comments
Posted by: wscott | August 8, 2008 1:07 PM
i disagree. according the the csm article, the army is looking to recruit 250-275 next year. a few dozen, 36, is about 13% or 14% of their recruitment for next year. while it certainly doesn't solve the problem, it is more than a drop in the bucket (unless we have differing interpretations of that expression).
that said, the article from the csm talks about the army specifically while the only other numbers i've seen talk about the military as a whole. according to the article below, as of may of 2007 all military branches combined had discharged 58 arabic linguists for being gay. i don't know what portion of those are from the army. also, there have probably been a few more in the last year.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/23/america/NA-GEN-US-Military-Gays.php
Posted by: sdg | August 8, 2008 1:24 PM
OK, you're right "drop in the bucket" probably understates the case. But it's still far short of solving the entire problem.
Posted by: wscott | August 8, 2008 1:41 PM
The problem as I see it is a multi pronged issue. Yes, repealing DADT to keep military specialists (of all MOSs) is preferable but in regards to military linguists, there needs to be a change in the over all policy. Many linguists (and for the record, my SO is a former army linguist - Arabic and Russian who left after twelve years). Many linguists, like Special Forces receive an additional pay for maintaining their language at a certain level. These linguists are mandated a certain amount of time for language maintenance which is often not received because of the strains of daily military life. When they fail their yearly proficiency exam, they are required to take a month long course to refresh the language. Often times, these are not scheduled due to a variety of reasons such as readiness issue. Additionally, many of the Arabic linguists are serving back to back tours (the whole reason my SO left the military is because he was facing just that).
Repeal DADT, and it will be a drop in the bucket. Increase the use of civilian interpreters while pumping linguists through the Defense Language Institute (which takes 65 weeks I believe) at the rate DLI pumped Russian out during the cold war (three different schools at DLI were training Russian during the late 80s) and we might be on to something. The problem is that any (almost) language skill is highly in demand and in order to be proficient takes more time than is desired currently. In addition, these schools have a very high failure rate even with soldiers who score in the top 10% of the ASVAB.
Posted by: Donna | August 8, 2008 3:26 PM
It doesn't help that Arabic is rated as one of the four hardest languages for a native English speaker to learn in terms of grammar, writing system, and cultural nuance (the other three are Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Korean). The State Department puts working proficiency at two years, with one year lived abroad with native speakers, as opposed to the six? months required for, say, Spanish. I know the Army program is different, but there's only so fast you can learn something so different from what you grew up speaking.
Russian was more midrange, I believe rated as middle difficulty.
I'd expect even higher rates in the Arabic language training programs. There may be hope as all the NSA scholarships have going to students studying Arabic (and ignoring our other language shortcomings) for the past few years, but I doubt they'll be going into the Army.
Posted by: Shar | August 8, 2008 6:11 PM
It may be just a "drop in the Bucket" but they are so short staffed now, that the ones they've lost could seriously translate into lives lost because of a lack of translation.
Let me say that again: DADT has likely been at least indirectly responsible for American Servicemen having lost their lives.
Contemplate that for a moment.
Posted by: Robert | August 9, 2008 1:26 AM
The military training program at DLI is often 8 hours a day of classroom work with an additional 2-4 hours of homework per night. At DLI, Asian languages including Hebrew and Arabic are Category 4 languages (65 weeks or longer to train-currently). Russian and other slavic languages are cat 3 coming in at 47 weeks. French, Spanish and other romance languages are cat 2 languages which work out to 6 months of training.
Mandarin Chinese averages a 2 year stay at DLI while Serbo-Croatian is only a one year stay. In the past DLI has tried to expedite students through (back in 1991, there was a push to make Arabic a 1 year course which failed miserably) the program but the program there is considered one of the most difficult in the military. As my SO described it, it is like taking a drink of water out of fire hose.
The fact is that the military cannot churn out linguists on demand. Well, they could but they would also have to lower their standards for language proficiency and then what good does it do?
Posted by: donna | August 9, 2008 10:33 AM