Thursday, December 25, 2003
Merry Christmas
Unless something drastic happens prior to January 1, 2004, this blog is closed for the holidays. I am thankful for each of you, our well-informed readers.
|posted by Jim on 11:00 PM|
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Friday, December 19, 2003
More on the Arabic Language Translator Shortage
The New Republic has a subscribers-only post, "Speechless", on the national security implications of the continued shortage of translators of the Arabic language. Readers learn:
The Army . . . has failed to attract Arabic speakers, resulting in a serious, sometimes embarrassing, strain on its Iraq operations. According to one American official in Iraq who speaks Arabic, "When one American official was giving a pep talk to his [new Iraqi] staff, basically saying, 'We expect you all to work hard for us, and, if you don't, you know that you'll be fired,' his words were translated as, 'We expect you to work hard for us, and, if you don't, you'll be lined up and shot.'" Many of the interpreters hired in Iraq, the official says, are from other Arab countries and speak dialects virtually impossible for Iraqis to understand.
On November 25th, Paul Krugman, managed to blame (you guess it) President George W. Bush's efforts to oust Saddam for this translator shortage. Krugman complained that "intelligence resources, including translators, were shifted from the pursuit of Al Qaeda to the coming invasion [of Iraq]."
Yet neither The New Republic nor Krugman have complained about the drain of Arabic translation resources for Clinton-era projects like Executive Order 13166. E.O. 13166 requires all but instant translation for any speaker of Arabic (or any other tongue) who wanders into any office in America which receives a penny of federal funds.
To folks like Krugman, the war against terrorism requires that conservatives must make sacrifices (e.g. repeal of the Bush tax cuts) while the most dubious liberal policies must outlast the pyramids of Egypt.
|posted by Jim on 2:53 PM|
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Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Tonight's Democratic Debate
Senator John Kerry just suggested we meet with Dali Lama to understand Islam. The reaction of the Dali Lama, a Buddhist, should be interesting.
|posted by Jim on 8:22 PM|
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Senator Paul Simon, RIP
The late Senator Paul Simon was outspoken on the importance of studying foreign languages. He wrote The Tongue-Tied American: Confronting the Foreign Language Crisis in 1980. One might say he was a bit of a monomaniac on the subject.
Senator Simon managed to blame the events of 9/11/01 on American ignorance of foreign tongues. In his endorsement of a November 2003 report for the Association of International Educators, Simon said: "The nation learned on September 11, 2001 that we must become much more sensitive to the rest of the world."
The report Simon endorsed went much further: "We are unnecessarily putting ourselves at risk because of our stubborn monolingualism and ignorance of the world." In other words, had there just been a few Americans who spoke Arabic on those jet airplanes, the Twin Towers would still be standing.
Learning a foreign language is always a good thing. But the American people can hardly be expected to learn every tongue spoken by anyone anywhere who has a grievance against America. Simon's hospital bed endorsement of Howard Dean is worrisome. Might a Dean Administration handle a future terrorist attack on American soil with mandatory language classes for American citizens?
|posted by Jim on 8:19 PM|
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Tuesday, December 02, 2003
Singapore, Language Rights and America's College Professors
Sometimes the best way to understand the politics of an issue in the United States is to see how the same issue is handled in other countries. I found this item in the Singapore's Straits Times fascinating:
The head of the Chinese department at Anglo-Chinese School (Barker Road), Mr Peh Chin Cheok, agreed that society may perceive Chinese as the language of the less successful.
'Some may think that the English-educated are better off, as language can be a mark of social class, just as some think French is high-class,' he said
But this view is set to change, businessmen and clan leaders told The Straits Times, as knowledge of the Chinese language now opens doors for business and culture.
Said Mr Tan Koh Tiang, secretary of the Teochew Poit Ip Huay Kuan: 'With the rise of China, speaking Mandarin is nothing to be ashamed of and is an asset.'
A Chinese language professor thinks more kids should study Chinese. Who knew?
Replace "Chinese" with the name of any other foreign language and you will understand one of the major forces pushing bilingual education, bilingual ballots and all the rest in the United States. The more mandatory multilingualism that exists, the greater the demand for the services of language teachers, which means higher salaries -- often far higher salaries -- than they would otherwise obtain from a free market.
Those who wonder at the hostility of many American academics to any form of capitalism might consider that practitioners of many academic disciplines would be lucky to earn any income from a free market economy. Accordingly, "the free market thinks what I do is worthless. Therefore the free market is evil."
When discussion turns to what every American student should know, these are the folks who cram achievement tests with the obscure and the trivial from their particular subject of interest.
These folks complain that second graders know nothing of Caravaggio. Most of us would settle for second graders able to read and write English.
|posted by Jim on 4:43 PM|
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