The Inspector General (I.G.) from the U.S. Department of Justice has reported that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is facing challenging issues in managing its language translation workload. The foremost among them is the agency’s staffing and technology problems which has been aggravated by the lack of a statistical reporting system and consolidated information.
The Inspector General found out that since March, 2005, the FBI had lost around 3% of its language experts. This has made the process of hiring and training new linguists tougher and longer – previously the agency required 16 months to hire and train a translator, but now it needs 19 months for the same. The report also states that over 70% of newly recruited linguists do not attend the prescribed training in their first year. Moreover, the FBI was not able to achieve its fiscal hiring goals for 12 out of 14 languages.
These issues have lead to a considerable and growing backlog of unexamined material, including documents and audio files related to terrorism. For the period between 2006-2008, the agency had amassed 46 million files, out of which it could just review 32 million. According to the Inspector General, it was the FBI’s failure to recruit the required number of language translation professionals within the right time-frame that has compromised its ability to manage the increasing workload of translation, as well as review and reduce the present backlog.
The history of English and French languages are intertwined, beginning with the fact that just like other major Western European languages both English and French are the descendants of proto-Indo-European family of languages. Although both languages separated on the Indo-European genealogy a long time back, their shared history has created some interesting issues in the process of English – French translation.
The history of Old English goes back to its origins as a language used by a number of north European tribes that settled in the British Isles driving away the Celts. During the 300 years rule of England by the Normans English language became the primary language of the common people and developed into what is now referred to as Middle English and then as words from Norman French, the official language of the court, flowed into English it evolved into Early Modern English.
Linguists believe that around a quarter to a third of the English vocabulary used at present has its roots in French. However as English became a more popular global language used in business and science, the reverse has also happened, i.e. French language has picked up new words from the English vocabulary. This has been opposed with moderate success by the French Academy which monitors the use of French language.
Their shared history has made English-French translation relatively easier; the languages share an extensive body of words that require little or no change. However those involved in translating the French-English language pair also need to be aware that there exist certain identical words in both languages which have entirely different meanings, for example, chair in English refers to a place for sitting while in French it means flesh. Similarly, coin in English is a form of money, while in French it refers to neighborhood. However, fortunately for translators similarities between the two languages are quite extensive, making the translation process easier.
