Students donned earphones to hear my lecture at the University of Madrid in 1972. “Speak in short declarative sentences so I can translate accurately,” the interpreter instructed with a tight smile. She disappeared behind a screen to my right.
I was on a United States Information Agency (USIA) speaking tour, my Spanish woefully inadequate to address students in their own language. I would speak a few sentences, pause, and wait for students to smile, frown or nod to judge their reaction.
My escort from the American Embassy assured me the university translated foreign speakers 90 percent of the time. But I found it an awkward experience. It had been difficult to convey corporate social responsibility concepts in English to business audiences in the States; little wonder foreign students struggled to make sense of it through an interpreter.
Language is essential to understanding different cultures, breaking down attitudinal barriers, and winning hearts.
A granddaughter raised in Alaska fell in love in Senegal while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer. Mariah and El Hadji married in 2007 near Mt. McKinley and a year later welcomed their daughter Leila into the world at Fairbanks. Mariah majored in French at college, a second language in Senegal. Had she majored in German or Spanish, their romance might not have blossomed.
My old friend Jim McCrory composed messages in Tokyo during the Korean War for Japanese interpreters to broadcast to mainland China and North Korea. Not a single American in his group had language skills to monitor what interpreters were broadcasting. “We had trust and confidence in our Japanese colleagues, but Lord knows what was actually aired over, ‘Voice of the United Nations Command’,” he reflected.
A Green Beret, who excelled in Arabic language classes, left the Army to attend graduate school. No one offered him a promotion to stay and train others, although our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are never sure whom they can trust and often have no idea what their interpreters are actually saying. The Department of Defense belatedly addressed the problem by forming the National Security Education Program (NSEP).
Former Health, Education, and Welfare official Morton Lebow applauds expansion of our citizens’ ability to speak, write and understand other languages, but is disappointed impetus comes from the DOD. “This puts the wrong imprimatur on what should be a national effort initiated by the Department of Education. Then again, perhaps we should be grateful it’s being done at all.”
Ray E. Hiebert, former dean of journalism at the University of Maryland, and former director of the Washington Journalism Center, says, “While the military should be more culturally aware and linguistically adept and practice more public diplomacy, the DOD should not be in charge of public information and education. In the hands of the military, it is certain to turn into public propaganda, even more than it would at the State Department. The program should be conducted by an independent agency answerable only to Congress. I did a lot of work for the USIA and Voice of America (VOA) when they were independent agencies, both genuinely concerned with disseminating news and aiding diplomacy. I cut ties when these agencies were transferred to the State Department.”
Hiebert studied under Edward Barrett at the Columbia Journalism School, who was Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs in the early days of the Cold War. Barrett’s book, Truth is Our Weapon, guided the work of the USIA and VOA. “That principle, adhering to objectivity and truth, was crucial to winning the Cold War,” Hiebert says, “and I don’t think today’s Defense Department thinks in those terms.”
Cynthia Thornburgh teaches English as a second language at Portland, Oregon’s community college, one of the largest in the nation.
“I’m a strong proponent of teaching foreign languages at an early age because language and culture are inextricably entwined. America is out of touch with much of the world in terms of global understanding. First world countries teach English to kids learning to walk.”
Thornburgh says language learned before puberty is essentially a first language and two or more languages can be learned simultaneously. “After puberty, the brain’s language acquisition device is altered and adapting to a new language becomes more difficult,” she says.
She believes if more Americans were bilingual they would be more tolerant and understanding of different cultures, less critical and more diplomatic. Thornburgh is convinced America’s diplomats and ambassadors should be fluent in the nation’s language to which they are assigned. Kindergarten, she says, is the time to start training.
Making language a part of career ladder mobility should add incentive. But as Lebow and Hiebert caution, the program should be independent, accountable only to Congress, with a broad reach that encompasses all departments of government.
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Carlton E. Spitzer
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