Four years ago, we reported on the FBI backlog in translating critical documents, noting an Inspector General’s audit that showed an increasing shortfall in reviewing counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism audio intercepts, and its difficulty in hiring linguists. Yesterday, news of an updated report from the Inspector General (I.G.) from the Department of Justice found that these language issues still hobble the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

According to the I.G.’s report, the FBI suffers from technology and staffing problems:

• On the technical front, the study found that the agency lacks a consolidated collection and statistical reporting system, making it difficult to determine exactly what it is doing with these documents.
• On the personnel side, the I.G. found that it lost three percent of its linguists since March 2005, thus complicating its longstanding challenges in hiring language specialists. The agency now takes 19 months — instead of the previous timeline of 16 months — to hire and train a linguist. Gaining security clearances accounts for 14 of those 19 months. The report also found that 70 percent of new linguists do not attend required training in their first year, and that the FBI did not meet its fiscal 2008 hiring targets for 12 of 14 languages.

The result of these problems is that the agency’s backlog of unexamined documents and audio files relating to terrorism continues to grow. The I.G. noted that “Failing to hire an adequate number of linguists in a timely manner adversely affects the FBI’s ability to manage the growing translation workload and reduce the current backlog of unreviewed material.” For example, from fiscal 2006 to 2008, the agency collected 46 million files but examined only 32 million, leaving nearly one-third of the documents untouched.

The FBI isn’t alone in its linguistic travails. In May 2009, the Central Intelligence Agency announced its own push to improve its ability to review and act on foreign-language information that it collects. Currently, just 13 percent of CIA staffers are fluent in a second language, while 30 percent of field officers in the National Clandestine Service claim another tongue. Language has been the poor stepchild of foreign policy for too many U.S. Presidents, but things could change with a Bahasa-conversant president.

The solution depends on a long-term government strategy that recognizes the importance of language in diplomacy, spycraft, and commerce; training and recruiting of individuals who speak languages of limited demand; a measured balance between security clearances and language needs; more training in critical languages; technology to manage projects, including machine translation to fill in the gaps and triage information; increased leverage across agencies via groups such as the Interagency Language Roundtable; and continued investment to keep it all going. Without active work on these initiatives, the next Inspector General’s report in 2013 will likely point to an even greater language gap than the last two uncovered.