Understanding the world
By Jeanne Chircop, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Office of Corporate Communications
At NGA we say, “Know the Earth . . . Show the Way. . .
Understand the World.”
To grasp the full meaning of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency vision, however, one must look deeper than the agency’s traditional imagery, mapping and navigational services.
Understanding the world means understanding the world’s people. At its core, intelligence is about knowing what adversaries are saying and doing, and where, when and why they are doing whatever it is they are doing.
Geospatial intelligence has long answered the ‘where’ and ‘when’ parts of the equation. The growing practice of integrating GEOINT with other intelligences, in particular human intelligence and signal intelligence, helps to better uncover the ‘what’ and ‘why’ aspects.
“GEOINT looks at places, but we need to understand what’s going on in those places,” said Karen Finn, chief of NGA’s Foreign Language and Culture program office.
“We especially need to be able to provide the cultural context that helps put activities into perspective.”
Doing that becomes possible only by understanding the languages, cultures and accurate place names of the adversaries under study.
Cultural context can have a big impact on understanding, according to Monique Yates, NGA’s senior language authority and head of the National Geospatial Intelligence College, or NGC, which houses the FLC program office. An obvious example, she said, is the need to understand the traditions of local tribes or religious sects. People of different heritage may engage in vastly different behaviors within the same geographical area.
Language differences can sometimes have an unexpected impact, said Yates. She harkened to her own experience living in Germany to illustrate her point.
“I shared with my friend that my baby was ‘cranky’ one day, and she gasped and was very concerned,” said Yates. “I finally realized she thought I was referring to the German word ‘Krankenhaus,’ which means hospital. I had to explain that my child was simply out of sorts and not seriously ill in the hospital.”
Yates also cited an example of how language differences and cultural savvy can inadvertently cause potential harm if they are not properly understood.
“As an American, I should not assume the word ‘gift’ means a good thing,” she said. “The German word ‘Gift’ means poison.”
Instead of using ‘gift,’ an American speaker would choose ‘present’ or even the German word for present, ‘Geschenke,’ she said, in order to avoid confusion.
“Understanding foreign language and culture helps us communicate and understand each other precisely,” said Yates.
An evolving language capability
In many ways it was easier in NGA’s early days. Cold War adversaries were fairly well defined. A degree in Russian studies was a ticket to the top of the hiring pool, and Russian language experts were in high demand.
These days, NGA’s FLC program office arranges instruction for employees in more than 50 languages and world cultures, and even more when regional dialects are considered. Among them are Uighur, Kyrgyz and Azeri, as well as rare African dialects that most people outside of the intelligence and diplomatic communities are less likely to have heard of, much less studied.
Mastery of foreign languages and cultures has always been critical to the IC. Recorded history is sprinkled with examples of people traveling to other lands to gather intelligence. Globalization of the modern world has made the study of languages and cultures even more necessary. Factors such as the global reach of the Internet, closer collaboration with coalition forces and the sharing of international documents, and the need to communicate with
work locations around the world make bi- and multi-lingual employees valuable assets to the IC and our nation’s security.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, speaking at a conference in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, in October 2015, cited the 9/11 terrorist attacks as the impetus for increasing foreign language training across the IC.
“And so after 9/11, we found that we lacked and needed people with unique skills in areas like terrorism analysis, critical languages [emphasis added] and cyber,” said Clapper.
The Foreign Service Institute under the U.S. Department of State is the leader in foreign language studies for government employees. FSI provides more than 600 courses in 70 languages to as many as 100,000 enrollees each year from State and 40 other government agencies and military service branches.
Foreign language and culture studies at NGA are based in the NGC, which offers services to members of the entire National System for Geospatial Intelligence and not just to NGA employees. The NSG includes NGA partner organizations, military services and fellow members of the intelligence and defense communities.
The FLC program office within the NGC conducts language proficiency testing and provides some basic language and culture instruction, but mostly it arranges — and pays for — proficient linguists to take part in external training to maintain their proficiency, even if it means traveling abroad to do so. Several NGA employees have taken part in immersion programs in other countries to attain a level of language and culture proficiency that is beyond the potential of traditional classroom instruction.
“We do less in-house training than we used to, because we’ve taken the emphasis of the program deeper,” said Finn. “We pay for different types of training, including programs at the State Department, theater-level training for deployers and focused learning at other government agencies and even some universities.”
This strategy is consistent with the U.S. Intelligence Community Foreign Language Strategic Plan (2012–2016) developed under DNI Clapper. The strategy states, “A renewed awareness now exists that mastery of a foreign language alone often does not meet intelligence needs. Regional knowledge, cultural awareness, and specialized domain expertise must be integrated into foreign language training and daily work for the IC to understand, track and thwart our enemies.”
Broader application
The FLC program office has evolved as NGA’s focus and work have become broader and more sophisticated. Prior to the current program, NGA offered the Language Area Studies in Training for Analysts, or LASTRA.
Obviously intended for a specific segment of the NGA workforce, LASTRA was a contracted two-week course and was replaced by a year-round FLC program in 2004. The FLC program office still provides training, tools, opportunities
and incentives that optimize analysis, but its offerings are much broader and are offered on a continual basis.
“At NGA, we want to preserve, maintain and bolster the foreign language capability that we have,” said Finn.
There are programs for employees interested in becoming interpreters or translators, as well as support for sign language interpreters to be able to interpret foreign language speech for employees who are deaf or hard of hearing. NGA also administers oral proficiency interviews and Defense Language Proficiency tests. NGA employees who obtain a high enough score on the DLP test, receive Foreign Language Incentive Pay , regardless of whether their full-time responsibilities involve foreign languages.
“Some employees work in totally unrelated fields, but they are resources when needed,” said Finn. “In light of the terrorist attacks in Paris, for instance, we have a list of employees around the agency who are proficient in French, and we called upon them as needed to help translate news articles, documents, etc., to better understand the situation.”
The agency also calls on language-proficient employees to step in and help with NGA leadership outreach and meetings with international partners as needed. For instance, NGA Director Robert Cardillo has had NGA Strategy 2015 translated into 35 languages to date for overseas visits and strategic meetings with foreign dignitaries.
Sometimes reaching proficiency in a foreign language leads to a new opportunity within NGA, especially if the employee desires the change.
“I became aware of a gentleman who worked in our financial management directorate who could speak up to seven languages,” said Yates. “He told me that he liked the financial area but that languages were his real passion. After he tested as proficient in three of those languages, I worked within the career service construct to move him into a position involving language translation on a full-time basis.”
In addition to helping that employee transition into a position he wanted, Yates said the example illustrates how NGA is working to match talent to mission.
“It’s a great example of how our career services framework works, especially as we implement our Mission-Talent Alignment strategy,” said Yates.
Future development
The National Geospatial-Intelligence College is working to enhance its FLC offerings in 2016 and beyond, according to Yates.
“We’ve started by blending together the list of top languages needed in the DOD and IC to come up with new NGA priority languages,” said Yates.
Other plans include initiating the use of the Blackboard virtual learning environment for language training on the World Wide Web. Through this medium, she said NGA employees will have online access to education and training wherever they are. The service will also be available to IC and
DOD partners within the GEOINT community.
In fiscal year 2016, employees will also be able to take advantage of online culture courses offered by major universities, such as the University of Montana, that can be streamed directly to their desktops. Online courses will help employees refresh their language skills in Korean, Japanese, Iraqi Arabic and Italian, to name a few.
“We are also working to finalize funding to complete a Foreign Language and Culture Resource Center at NGA Campus East,” said Yates. “This center will serve as a hub for foreign language and culture training, events, activities and language roundtable meetings.”
Yates also cited plans to collaborate with partners to share college space and training expertise around the world, and to examine the software licenses needed to provide computer-based language and culture training across the NSG community.
“It’s exciting for me to see the benefit of foreign language proficiency in the agency,” said Yates. “It’s all about ensuring that NGA has the foreign language capabilities and the regional and cultural expertise to support our mission both now and in the future.”
