The Importance of Foreign Language Education

United States today carries new responsibilities in many quarters of the globe, and we are at a serious disadvantage because of the difficulty of finding persons who can deal with the foreign language problem.
                -U.S Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in 1953

For the United States to get to where it needs to be will require a national commitment to strengthening America’s foreign language proficiency.
                -CIA Director Leon Panetta

Today’s operating environment demands a much greater degree of language and regional expertise requiring years, not weeks, of training and education, as well as a greater understanding of the factors that drive social change.
                -Quadrennial Defense Review February 2010

It’s clear to all of us that schools, colleges, and universities need to invest more and smarter in linguistic instruction.
                -U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

We must support programs that cultivate interest in and scholarship in foreign languages and inter cultural affairs, including international exchange programs. This will allow citizens to build connections with people overseas and develop skills and contacts that will help them thrive in a global economy.
                -National Security Strategy May 2010

Our nation’s 21st century needs for Americans with global competence are much broader and deeper than anytime in our history—in many more languages and cultures, and across most professions.  Global competence must become part of our education system’s core mission, beginning in the earliest grades through graduate school. 
                -Miriam A. Kazanjian, Coalition for International Education

FLAP (Foreign Language Assistance Program) is a significant contribution to providing our students with the global language competencies and awareness, they, and our nation, must have to survive and prosper in the 21^st Century.
                -Dr. J. David Edwards, Executive Director of the Joint National Committee for Languages

The United States is a “linguistically malnourished” country compared with many other nations.
                -Senator Paul Simon in the Tongue Tied American, 1980

You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language.
                -President Obama, 2008

78 Priority Languages in the US: Less Commonly Taught But Critical

Section 601(c)(1) of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA) requires that the consult with Federal agency heads in order to receive recommendations regarding areas of national need for expertise in foreign languages and world regions. The Secretary may take those recommendations into account when identifying areas of national need for the International Education Programs authorized by Title VI of the HEA and administered by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE). See HEA, Sec. 601(c) (20 U.S.C. 1121 (c)). What follows are the seventy-eight priority languages that are less commonly taught, as identified by the Secretary:

1. Akhan (Twi-Fante)
2. Albanian
3. Amharic
4. Arabic (all dialects)
5. Armenian
6. Azeri (Azerbaijani)
7. Balochi
8. Bamanakan (Bamana, Bambara, Mandikan, Mandingo, Maninka, Dyula)
9. Belarusian
10. Bengali (Bangla)
11. Berber (all languages)
12. Bosnian
13. Bulgarian
14. Burmese
15. Cebuano (Visayan)
16. Chechen
17. Chinese, Cantonese
18. Chinese, Gan
19. Chinese, Mandarin
20. Chinese, Min
21. Chinese, Wu
22. Croatian
23. Dari
24. Dinka
25. Georgian
26. Gujarati
27. Hausa
28. Hebrew, Modern
29. Hindi
30. Igbo
31. Indonesian
32. Japanese
33. Javanese
34. Kannada
35. Kashmiri
36. Kazakh
37. Khmer (Cambodian)
38. Kirghiz
39. Korean
40. Kurdish ¡V Kumanji
41. Kurdish ¡V Sorani
42. Lao
43. Malay (Bahasa Melayu or Malaysian)
44. Malayalam
45. Marathi
46. Mongolian
47. Nepali
48. Oromo
49. Panjabi
50. Pashto
51. Persian (Farsi)
52. Polish
53. Portuguese
54. Quechua
55. Romanian
56. Russian
57. Serbian
58. Sinhala (Sinhalese)
59. Somali
60. Swahili
61. Tagalog
62. Tajik
63. Tamil
64. Telugu
65. Thai
66. Tibetan
67. Tigrigna
68. Turkish
69. Turkmen
70. Ukrainian
71. Urdu
72. Uyghur/Uigur
73. Uzbek
74. Vietnamese
75. Wolof
76. Xhosa
77. Yoruba
78. Zulu

Federal Budget and Foreign Languages: Not a Happy Couple

As many of you know, last Friday’s budget deal was cut before the figures were firm.  We are now beginning to see the actual reductions that are included in the Continuing Resolution leading to this Thursday’s  budget/appropriations vote.  There is not much good news — one exception is that despite a previous attempt to eliminate it,  the Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) was not reduced. 

On the other hand, Title VI, Foreign Languages and International Education in Higher Education, was reduced by $50 million.  The Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) was cut by $140 million, and the  Fund for the Improvement of Education (FIE) was reduced by $231 million.

Byrd Honors Scholarships were eliminated, as were Even Start, Striving Readers, Educational Technology State Grants, and the National Writing Project.

The National Endowment for the Humanities was only reduced by $13 million, which is somewhat surprising given the vocal nature of its critics.

Over in the State Department, Educational and Cultural Exchange Programs were pared by $35 million, the U.S. Institute of Peace took a $10 million hit, Assistance for Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia lost $44 million, and the Peace Corps. $25 million.

One other somewhat positive reaction is that most of these programs were not eliminated and, consequently, may over time see their funding restored. 

While these reductions are very likely a done deal, contacting your Members of Congress to express your dissatisfaction about the harm done to these valuable, worthwhile national contributions is the first step in renewing their funding.  Thank you.

Courtesy of J. David Edwards, Ph.D. Executive Director, JNCL/NCLIS

Fluent in another language? The CIA wants you

Multilingual recruits at a premium; but, U.S. is a living lab for how we learn

WASHINGTON, D.C.  — Many Americans don’t learn a second or a third language from birth, let alone a language that the CIA or U.S. Foreign Service might want. The situation has forced U.S. government agencies to learn how to cultivate the most talented second-language speakers from among college students with little to no other-language expertise.

But experts who help select and train raw talent also see an opportunity in the mass of recruits who start out speaking only English. That’s because the U.S. represents a living laboratory for observing how adult brains change over time as they struggle to adapt to the new grammar and vocabulary of a second language.

“In U.S. education, we don’t develop early bilinguals,” said Catherine Doughty, a language expert at the University of Maryland. “We’re dealing with monolinguals or people who have only studied foreign language, so that they don’t really have any proficiency.”

Read more…

US Senate Saves Foreign Language Assistance Program



From the Joint National Committee for Languages (JNCL) and the National Council for Languages and International Studies (NCLIS):

The Senate Appropriation Committee has prepared their version of the FY 2011 Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government and its programs through the remainder of this fiscal year.  The Senate bill reduces the President’s budget request by $50 billion as opposed to the House bill, H.R. 1, which has a $100 billion reduction.

The positive news is that the Senate bill level funds the Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) at $26.928 million and Title VI, Foreign Languages and International Education in Higher Education, at $125.881 million.

Nevertheless, the House and Senate budget bills differ by about $50 Billion ($10 Billion for education alone).  They will attempt to resolve these differences by March 18.  Please contact your Senators and Representatives and urge them to support the more reasonable and workable Senate reductions. 

Final figures will be posted on the JNCL/NCLIS web site.

Translation Issues with the EU-Korea Free Trade Pact

Discrepancies between Korean, English versions cause uproar

By Kim Tae-gyu, Korea Times

When the European Parliament approved the free trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea midway through February, the pact looked set for smooth sailing.

Just ahead of the parliamentary reviews here, however, things abruptly changed because of discrepancies located in the Korean- and the English-language versions of the accord.

The original Korean-language text signed last October was found to have numerous translation errors of late. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MOFAT) corrected them to present the ratification motion to the National Assembly last week.

Yet, domestic experts contend that there are additional mistakes, some of which they say might be intentional.

Read more…

US Chamber of Commerce Blue Ribbon for CETRA

Elkins Park, PA, March 1, 2011– Jiri Stejskal, President and CEO of CETRA Language Solutions, is pleased to announce that CETRA has been recognized as a Blue Ribbon Small Business Award winner by the US Chamber of Commerce for the third year in a row.

“The recipients of this year’s Blue Ribbon Small Business Award are on the forefront of our economic recovery,” said Thomas J. Donohue, U.S. Chamber president and CEO. “These small businesses are our nation’s job creators, and this award recognizes their significant contributions to our economy.”

Read more…

Federal Budget and Foreign Language Education

The House of Representatives continues to consider H.R.1, the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act for FY 2011.  This legislation, introduced by Chair of the Appropriations Committee Hal Rogers (R-KY), originally would have reduced this fiscal year’s federal spending by $74 Billion.  Newly-elected tea party Representatives forced the Committee to go back and find further cuts totaling $100 Billion.  The legislation literally addresses every government agency’s budget line-by-line. While program eliminations are still influx, in the Education Department H.R.1 would eliminate the Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) and other small programs dealing with foreign languages.

Interpretations Can Leave Room For Interpretation

AlJazeeraEnglish/YouTube

By Linton Weeks, NPR

People in the United States and around the world watched and heard Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak speak Thursday night.

But depending on your knowledge of Arabic — or more likely the interpreter on the network you were watching or listening to — you could get very different ideas of what Mubarak was saying.

In terms of English interpretations, the NPR person (who was provided through an ABC feed) told it one way, the CNN person said it another way and the Al-Jazeera intermediary recited it yet another way.

Read more…

 

 

Johnson – a Language Blog by The Economist

“An anglicisme is one of the most egregious sins a child at a French school can commit: language is butchered in translation. The English spoken here in Brussels is replete with evidence to that effect. Eurocrats speak of  ‘acquiring via distance communication’, having a ‘common orientation’, and writing a ‘non-paper’. But translation can also be enriching: look no further than Sweglish.” (Read more…)

The above is a sampling from Johnson, a blog named after the dictionary-maker Samuel Johnson, in which correspondents for The Economist write about the effects that the use (and sometimes abuse) of language have on politics, society and culture around the world.

Check it out at http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson