Monday, August 29, 2011

"Lost in Translation"

Or: The more the Army changes, the more it remains the same.
Lost in Translation: How the Army Wastes Linguists Like Me | Danger Room | Wired.com
I was offered the opportunity to deploy to support Desert Storm.  "I'm a Korean linguist, what'll I be doing, guarding the SCIF?"
"No, driving a truck."
"Did that on an exercise in Egypt, I'd rather storm Baghdad, it'd be safer."

2 comments:

DaddyBear said...

I had the same conversation many times. "I speak Russian, why am I going to Honduras?" Also heard: "You're a Farsi linguist. What are you doing on Bosnia?".

Drang said...

For the first half or so of my career I kept running into Chinese linguists, they were basically used to fill 98G lines in units that were suddenly critical enough to fill out, with no regard to projected mission. I'm sure the 101st was bemused by the Korean linguists they got, especially when they came down on orders after 12 months.