Apuntes charla con 

Harry Obst, Director, Office of Language Services, US Department of State Interview 

by Rosa Codina

The US State Department uses 1,700 interpreters and 300 translators on a contractual basis. In general, the assignments are exciting and interesting and professional requirements vary in different languages and in the level of skill needed to perform certain tasks. To talk about these subjects and the field of translating and interpreting, Apuntes interviewed Harry Obst at the A T A Conference in Nashville last November.

Q. Mr. Obst, what is the current employment situation in your Department for translators or interpreters?

A. The staff position situation is very bad at this moment. We are not hiring any staff translators or interpreters, except Russian. But I would say that in the next two years or so staff opportunities could open up for French, Spanish and Portuguese. Because our staff resources are currently so low, we are expanding our roster of contract interpreters and translators. Right now, 85% of the daily language support requests at the State Department are for interpreting and about 15% for translating. Since the 1960s, interpreting has work for the State Department? grown much more rapidly than translating.

A. Qualification requirements are different for interpreters and translators. In interpreting we have a wide range of professional skill levels. We have about 200 missions a day for escorting foreign visitors around the country. That doesn't require the same degree of skills and aptitudes and the same degree of terminology command as we would need for other interpreting assignments,

Apart from escort interpreting, we also provide interpreting for the White House, the President and the Vice President and other government leaders, for the State Department and other agencies. All interpreters must pass a test. This is an aptitude test to evaluate a their potential to do our type of InterpretIng work adequately. For that InterpretIng test, the speed and the subjects vary depending on the language involved. For example, the exercIse for the escort interpreter will be easIer than for the conference interpreter. If the exercIse Involves RussIan, the texts are likely to Include nuclear dIsarmament, If It is for SpanIsh, It mIght refer to NAFTA, and to UN or OAS-related subjects.

Q The test for translators... ?

A. For translators, we have a two-hour written exam more likely another seventy years will be needed to for each language combination. The texts are taken from our active working environment except for some occasional texts specially designed to see whether a person has basic translating aptitude or not. The staff translators in Washington handle about half of our daily workload, and we contract out the rest, usually 45 to 50% of the total volume, depending on the language. There are a number of languages for which we do not have staff at all. PolIsh is a bIg contract language, for example, but for the busIest languages we have staff translators, e.g. Spanish, French, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, etc. We also have at this time no staff translators for Japanese and Chinese. Spanish was our busiest language until 1990 when Russian became the first and Spanish the second busiest language at the State Department.

A. There are three levels of clearance involved: NAC (no access to classify information; no citizenship required), SECRET and TOP SECRET for which citizenship is required. Once a candidate has passed our the test, we will forward the resume to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security of the Department of State and request the appropriate clearance. For the NAC, which applies to most candidates, an interagency computer check is performed to make sure the person does not belong to a terrorist organization or has otherwise undesirable background. This process approximately takes two to three months to complete. HIgher clearances requIre more tIme.

Q. Mr. Obst, what do you think about the controversial machine translation issue?

A. I said in 1966, and I didn't change my mind, that accurate machine translation will not be accomplished in a hundred years. Little progress has been made in the 30 years since. Machine translations are only feasible and useful in a very narrow and highly specialized environment, for instance the translation of repetitive and highly standardized weather reports. To build a translation machine which can handle the accurate transfer of meaning and concepts from one sophisticated language to another, it would take many hundreds of billions of dollars. Even if that money were available today, at least another thirty, and much more likely another seventy years will be needed to build a reliable general translation machine. Everybody has underestimated the enormity of such a project. Conversely, computers and machines will increasingly be used to assist the human translator with terminology references, formatting, calling up previously translated standard formulations, etc.

Q. But a representative of one vendor attending the Conference told Apuntes that the U.S. government uses machine translation for its money laundering investigations...

If so, then probably not for translations but for browsing thousands of pages of foreign texts, which is the way part of the Defense Department is using its MT capability. This is how it works: the machine does a highly inaccurate, rough translation, which is also full of grammatical errors. Then an experienced human translator or MT expert looks at this raw translation and may report: "What we have here are three reports from Lima, Peru on big amounts of black money having been deposited in two banks". If that text is of interest, it can then be given to a human translator for experienced professionals for accurate translation. So what thirty years of heavy investment have produced are essentially information professionals gathering machines rather than reliable machine translation.

Q. Why did you say before that interpretation is growing more rapidly?

A. For the last 20 years or so, interpretation needs worldwide have grown at about three times the rate of translation needs. There are two major reasons. The number of independent countries has greatly increased and, with it, the demand to use their national languages. Out of the dissolution of the Soviet Union alone came about a dozen national languages onto the world stage. South Africa has gone from two to eleven official languages. The most immediate results are verbal communication needs when these nations engage in discussions and negotiations with other nations and for their internal debates. The increase in written translations usually comes later.

The second reason is that the use of interpreters is rapidly increasing, especially in the U nited States, in court proceedings and in community interpreting. Court interpreting is the first area to begin to be regulated in a meaningful fashion for some states such as New York, New Jersey, California Florida and Texas. Thousands ofnew jobs will be added in the next few years in court and community interpreting in the next few years. Another very promising area of expansion is telephone interpreting offered by major telephone companies. AT&T already has about 5,000 interpreters working for them.

Q. You worked in this field for 30 years. What do you think about the quality of translators and interpreters ?

A. Yes, I have now been working in this field in the United States for 31 years. Very little has improved over that time, specially in academia and in the federal government. Some states have done better. New Jersey for instance, has good training programs for court interpreters. South Carolina is supporting a new training program for Charleston University for a masters degree in legal interpretation. The quality of American translators and interpreters is a function of available training programs with heavy input from experienced professionals. In contrast to Europe, we have only a handful of programs that provide quality professionals. In general, outside the profession, there is still a lot of ignorance about our field. Inside, there has been a lot of confusion and division within the professions and within the associations. I keep going around the country reminding colleagues that we have to stick together as professionals to earn respect which our profession richly deserve, instead of fighting each other. In the last two or three years, I finally begin to see some positive results.

PROFESSIONAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR TRANSLATORS AND INTERPRETERS AT THE US STATE DEPARTMENT

Staff positions require a high degree of translating aptitude and the ability to translate from at least two foreign languages into English. For translation into foreign languages, a high degree of native fluency, at an educated level is required in formulating idiomatic and technically accurate written texts in many topical areas. Once foreign language suffices to qualify. The application process is different from that for contract interpreters. The State Department pays $110/per one thousand words from translations into English, higher for into foreign languages. For more information, call (202)47-3476.

Escort interpreters are used for foreign visitors, invited to the US under different government programs. Basic consecutive interpreting aptitude and fluency in English and one foreign language (of more than 60) are required. This is contract work only and currently pays $160 per day plus travel expenses.

This State Department category applies to simultaneous interpreters not yet fully qualified for the conference level. They work in informal environments such as training seminars and briefings for groups of international visitors. This category currently pays $250.00 per day and usually involves travel.

This is the highest skill category for State Department contract interpreters. It requires a high degree of interpreting aptitude and accuracy of delivery as well as considerable general knowledge. In some

languages, for instance, Russian, contracts will be given for consecutive interpretation only. Much of the work, however is in simultaneous, where the knowledge of several foreign languages is advantageous. Dominant languages are Russian, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Japanese and more recently Ukrainian. This category currently pays $370.00 per day.

For information on State Department work opportunities in interpreting, write to: Office of Language Services, Interpreting Division, Room 2212 MS, Department of State, Washington, DC 20520-2204.

Born in Germany, Harry Obst came to the United States in 1956 after completing a translator program at the University of Mainz, Germany. After several years in the private industry, he joined the Department of State in 1965 as a diplomatic interpreter. Since then, he has interpreted for seven American presidents from Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton.

Obst has given lectures and seminars on the methodology, teaching and practice of interpretation and translation at several universities and colleges in the United States and Europe and before professional audiences allover the world.

In 1972, the President of Austria awarded him the Grand Decoration of Merit and a year later he received an invitation from German President Gustav Heinemann to go to Berlin for a private discussion on the American cultural and political scene.

In 1984 he became director of the State Department's Office of Language Services which also serves the White House and several federal agencies and he was appointed into the Senior Executive Service in January of 1995.

In 1994, he was the keynote speaker at the A T A Conference in Austin, Texas.

Mr. Obst will finish his government career in March 1997, and he plans to spend the following two years writing and lecturing in Europe about the United States before undertaking any other formal endeavor.