TO WIN THE 'LANGUAGE RACE' WITH RUSSIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000300570048-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 29, 1999
• Sequence Number: 48
• Content Type: NSPR

FOIAb3b
To Wint4heI1anguages-
ief handicaps in making friends in foreign lands is tom'
One of our ch
talk their language. At the moment, the linguistic-minded R
ST JACOB ofkwwsOt
CPYRGHT
agitator addresses a group of pen- . passable conversation in the language
ants. Gesticulating animatedly, he of the host country, much less analyse
lashes out against American "imperial- a newspaper editorial indicating yhiob
ism" and extols the virtues of con- way the political winds may be blow-
munism. He is talelrg to his Satsnrs log. Add to this the ignorance of area
in their own languags' -sad. metwver, background and local customs, com-
in the. particular dialect of the area. pound It further with the ill-ooncealed
In Moscow, tots ofd to i inssverai disdain for alien cultures of a small'
elementary sciwois do lllsilr trai tides but harmful minority of Americans
in English. They are bst4 groomed to s6sead, and you have the ingredients
becomw sp ,_ 01 Mngjh& and, enc, of a formula for alienating foreign
ports in the Englh-.Peakttlg world. 'Peoples.
The Communist domain Is Increasing
its linguistic fireppwer. Radio Moscow
blasts forth in more than a hundred
tongues, carrying the message of mili-
tant Marxism to the remotest arcs of
the globe. The Soviet Institute of For-
eign Languages trains the crown of
Russia's linguistically Inclined youth in
several hundred languages. rarfgtng
from Danish to Swahili. The Soviet
State Foreign Language Pubtlshing
A DIPLOMAT returning from Libya,
in the sensitive and critical Moslem
area. reported that the Russians moved
into that country with a mission of fif-
teen Arabic-speaking diplomats. The
United States mission had only one Lan-
guage officer, who was shortly there-
after transferred to a post outside the
Arabic-speaking world.
One illustration of the ridiculous and
.House is feverishly preparing . die- dangerous consequences of language
tionarles and texts in over eighty tor- unpreparedness came from Indonesia
eign languages. some years ago. Until 1949 all trans
The already demanding ltr$lgUS ? r!- z lating for the American Embassy 'in
quirements in Soviet schoeli har1p been Indonesia was done by natives. To
made stiffer. If Ivan wilhM tie attend
a vacs, or higher educational '
.tion, he must usually pass an entienbe
examination in a foreign 1rul CAlage.
preferably English. A recent text for
the study of English states, "A Soviet
officer must be a ? ? stronger in-tech-
nique than his enemy. He must know
? ? ? especially mathematics. Physics
and languages...
A LOOK at our own linguistic situa-,
tion reveals a picture of a different
sort. Thrust into a position of world
leadership by World War II, we have
found ourselves woefully underpr+eepared
from, the linguistic viewpoint >lifl'r this
role. More than a decade after the war
we completely lack real large ex-
perts for numerous sensitive areas of
the world. A survey recently' oornpletdd
by the writer and published by the State
Departmept's External Research Staff.
revealed that only 165 of America's
nearly 1.800 colleges teach Russian?
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9'ad MPH
please their employers, the translators
interpreted everything to make' local
comment sound. friendly ana pro-
American. But when American lan-
guage-area experts arrived and began
to read Indonesian newspapers and
attend sessions of the Legislature, the
embassy learned with dismay that
strong anti-American feeling was
sweeping that country.
Repeated statements by our diplo-
matic spokesmen have pointed up the
handicap which the lack of language
knowledge imposes upon overseas per-
sonmel. Secretary of State John Foster
Dulles has said : "The United States
today carries new responsibilities in
many quarters -of the globe. We are
at a serious disadvantage because of
the difficulty of finding persons who
can deal with the foreign language
problem."
A. letter to Washington headquarters
from a United States Information
Service officer statieewd in Tel w*
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GFA RDP75-0Q001 R00030
CPYRGHT
D570048-1