🚀 go-pugleaf

    (Of course, the *ideal* person might have a lot of linguistics *and*
    a lot of group theory and other relevant math *and* a hefty dose of
    high-performance computer expertise.  Such people are probably rather
    hard to find, though...)

*And* be willing to work for a secret spook agency.  Those are
even harder to find...

Here's a semi-counterexample though: I used to know a hippie type
who was a grad student in Turkish Literature, but who came from the US.
He did various odd jobs to get by until one day the DoD asked
if he would like them to pay all his school expenses---with almost no
obligations.  Seems they decided Turkish was a "strategic" language
and they were willing to spring some $$$ just to make sure that
at least a few US nationals understood it.  After he accepted,
he basically never heard from them except they paid his bills
and every now and then would send him documents in Turkish and
ask for translations.  He said the documents were always innocuous
news reports etc. and he suspected that their only purpose was
to make sure he was still around and studying.

In article <63663@cup.portal.com> Christopher_C_Lapp@cup.portal.com writes:
>I noticed a full page advertisement recruiting for the National
>security agency in the American Translators Association bulletin.
>Why would the NSA want language types?  I thought they did alot
>number-crunching and your average translator has had little or
>no math background.  Also, don't they have a whole much of
>Defense Language School types who have been drilled in every 
>language imaginable?

I suspect that messages sent between (say) the Saudi Arabian Oil
Ministry and it's London office, might well be in languages other
than US Standard English...

More seriously, James Bamford "The Puzzle Palace" (Houghton Mifflin,
1982 / Penguin, 1983; ISBN 0-14-006748-5) quotes "A former [UK GCHQ]
A Group voice-processing specialist" as saying

	"You operate primarily on key words, because
	 there is no way that in a year [of Russian
	 language school] you are going to comprehend
	 the language well enough to understand what's
	 going on.  They've had second-generation
	 people who have had a hard time because some
	 people slur, and there is geographical variance,
	 so they expect a non-native to just operate
	 on the key words -- when you hear the word
	 missle, for example."

In other words, governmental crypto agancies need a lot of linguists,
and at least some of these have to be pretty good.  Thus the ATA ad.

(Of course, the *ideal* person might have a lot of linguistics *and*
a lot of group theory and other relevant math *and* a hefty dose of
high-performance computer expertise.  Such people are probably rather
hard to find, though...)

- Jonathan Thornburg
  <jonathan@einstein.ph.utexas.edu> or <jonathan@hermes.chpc.utexas.edu>
  University of Texas at Austin / Physics Dept / Center for Relativity
  and (for a few more months) U of British Columbia / {Astronomy,Physics}

Christopher_C_Lapp@cup.portal.com writes:

> I noticed a full page advertisement recruiting for the National
> security agency in the American Translators Association bulletin.
> Why would the NSA want language types?  I thought they did alot
> number-crunching and your average translator has had little or
> no math background.  Also, don't they have a whole much of
> Defense Language School types who have been drilled in every 
> language imaginable?  Is the NSA just fishing?  Are they desparate
> for talent or what?

My guess is that since they relied on the military for many of those 
functions, they may need to build up their own staff due to cutbacks in 
the military. Much of the NSA's monitoring is supposed to be open 
sources that need to be translated before being passed on to the 
analysts.


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The translation sections are (almost) completely separate from the technical sections.  The
requirement for linguists who are also math (or computer science or ...) trained is to
translate technical documents from the source language into English (a noticeably different
skill than translating ordinary conversations).  In general, Americans are so "America-
centered" it is quite difficult for intelligence / military / commercial interests to find
enough adequately skilled people to satisfy the demand (for translators).

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