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The News site for Linguists |
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22-01-2007
Why Iraqi interpreters are heroes
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Oregon, USA (Oregon): One of the most common ways that American soldiers interact with Iraqis is when they stop their cars to ask where they are going or what they are carrying. And those interactions wouldn't happen without the services of a person who speaks both English and Arabic. […] That person, in all likelihood, is somebody who threads his or her way home from the American base, traveling at different times and by different paths, so as to keep neighbors from knowing what he or she does all day. Discovery, after all, can mean a name painted on the wall of a mosque or a bullet in the translator's brain, or the brain of a brother or sister. The translator does it, probably, because there's no other way to earn $400 in war-ravaged Iraq.
For more information, please visit:
www.oregonlive.com/editorials/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/11692383586180.xml&coll=7
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