it would appear that the US government doesn’t seem to need (or respect!) professional translators; just post your documents on the web and let the world have a go at them. this article appeared in the boston globe:
US puts Iraqi documents on the Web
Goal is to speed up translation of files
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | March 18, 2006
Joseph Shahda of Randolph earns his living as an engineer. But in his spare time, he’s an intelligence agent, working to ferret out the truth about the regime of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
When the US government on Thursday began publishing captured Iraqi government documents on the Internet, Shahda eagerly began to translate the files into English and publish them on a conservative website.
”I feel a sense of duty,” said Shahda, a native of Lebanon who supports President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. ”I think it’s a duty for people who know Arabic to translate the documents.”
US officials hope that thousands of other Arabic speakers feel the same. Goaded by Congress, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte has begun to release millions of pages of captured files online in an unprecedented effort to harness the Internet to disseminate raw intelligence material. There, anybody with a knowledge of Arabic can download the files and translate them for the world.
evidently anyone can translate, as long as you know two languages… hmm… toward the end of the article at least we see some encouraging commentary:
While conservative US bloggers, and some Iraqis, are eager to translate and read the Iraq documents, some prominent liberal bloggers scoffed at the release. ”To me, this is just more evidence that the Bush administration doesn’t take national security seriously,” wrote Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the popular Daily Kos website. ”Why doesn’t our government have enough translators to handle this job?”
unbelievable. or not…
