"Say it in English, please!"

The Invisible Person Translator equals traitor. So goes the saying. It is indeed hard for that situation to be otherwise when one solicits the help of someone whose family members and friends have been killed by one’s invading compatriots. Former Secretary of State Leon Panetta described the deplorable situation of foreign language study in the United States in a comprehensive report replete with multiple recommendations. Panetta told an assembly of about 2,500 soldiers, sailors, aviators and Marines standing in formation on Soldier Field overlooking Monterey Bay that the language and cultural training they are receiving here is critical to the nation’s economic, diplomatic and security interests. “It is absolutely vital to what the United States is all about,” he said. “We live in a global world,” the secretary said. “We have to understand that world if we … are going to be able to not only defend this country, but to extend our relationships to others so that we can work together to defend the world that we live in.” He continued to say that: Deep expertise in foreign languages is fundamental to CIA’s success. Whether an officer is conducting a meeting in a foreign capital, analyzing plans of a foreign government, or translating a foreign broadcast, language capability is critical to every aspect of our mission. Language skills are the keys to accessing foreign societies, understanding their governments, and decoding their secrets. Stronger language skills will give our officers enhanced access to the information our policymakers need to protect our nation. No one else is better prepared to ascertain that it is a matter of national security and life and death for our troops than Mr. Panetta. Although the government has excellent language learning programs, it has not been able to have them percolate the American educational system. We simply start too late and do not attach enough importance to the pursuit of acquiring mastery and proficiency. Foreign language study is fragmented and discontinuous. So long as colleges do not require at least two years of a language other than English for graduation, the U.S. will continue to lag behind in this area. It is safe to say that we are so uncomfortable about the need to use interpreters in very sensitive situations that we simply do not show their faces on television if we can help it. Translators and interpreters are the people who facilitate communication between us and the rest of the world. They are unobtrusive and inconspicuous while they fill a gap of which the public is not even aware. We generally ignore them unless we personally find ourselves in a situation that demands their special skill. The manifest presence of an interpreter is clearly a sign that both interlocutors are lacking in some sort. We certainly do not want to see people we hold in high esteem in such a position. Therefore, it is best to conceal this want by ascertaining that the interpreter is not visible. By communicating directly with a person without an intermediary one becomes visible to the other person, for he can speak to you and look you in the eye instead of talking to you through another person. That is a powerful asset, especially when negotiating with the Asians. There are certain things on which the media are not going to expatiate: friendly fires, soldiers’ suicides, soldier-on-soldier crimes, translators’ betrayals are among the salient mishaps and sad occurrences. The latter is a happening that we only incidentally hear about, and as an Achilles’ heel we do not dwell on it. There is a tinge of discomfort about this situation because unless one is thrust into that situation; no one fancies entering a country without a modicum of linguistic preparation. I shall open a parenthesis for economic refugees, people fleeing natural disasters, and those that have been transplanted against their will. It does not have to be that way for our best young men and women volunteers who serve the nation if we put our money where our mouth is. If a place is important enough to ask men and women in the prime of their lives to make the ultimate sacrifice by venturing into a hostile environment, we can at least ascertain that they can comprehend the written and spoken words around them for their protection and survival. That process has to start very early in our children’s education. It is not un-American or unpatriotic to bestow visibility on serious language programs geared toward forming multilingual and multicultural students. That would be in our own interest and for our own good. Instead of treating a multilingual person as some one that has been afflicted with a disease (You speak that language?), we should be extolling the virtues of programs likely to generate a plethora of such students. Many countries, such as France, Germany, Belgium, Russia, China to mention just a few have instituted language concentration programs in the high school curriculum in order to ensure that their countries have a sufficient number of language proficient students to fulfill their needs for language specialists. These programs function on a par with math, engineering, or science programs, and the students enrolled in such programs are as valuable as the other students are; they are not a “minor” concentration, nor are they an elite group, or recipients of a privilege restricted to a select few. As of this writing, there are more Chinese people learning English than the total number of Americans living in the United States; simply put, Chinese English learners are over 300 million and growing.