'Ebonics' Translators Needed By Justice Department

The Smoking Gun (via Gawker) reports that the Justice Department is looking to hire translators fluent in 'ebonics' to help monitor, transcribe and translate conversations recorded in drug investigations.

The DEA is seeking a total of nine translators to enable the department to use their investigative technology to maximum effectiveness:

...while "technology plays a major role in the DEA's efforts, much of its success is increasingly dependent upon rapid and meticulous understanding of foreign languages used in conversations by speakers of languages other than English and in the translation, transcription and preparation of written documents."

The department's backlog of unintelligible 'ebonics' transcripts would be a great story line for "The Wire," but sadly that show has ended.

Comments

[dbrett480]

05:36 PM on 09/08/2010

I don't see what the big deal is. These experts will be used to decode drug transactio­ns that are made in a certain vernacular and lead to more drug dealers spending more time in prison.

[stopallthenonsense]

03:47 AM on 08/27/2010

Language inevitably changes. Has been doing so for as long as we humans started speaking. It can change within one city alone. Now it is problemati­c that the DEA needs translator­s and waste money on this. It is problemati­c that we have such a divide where a kid selling drugs has a language that is so different than a man working as an agent. It is problemati­c to read the comments here. The term Ebonics is problemati­c too. It refers to race when in fact I don't think the vernacular is race based. It often is but it is more to do with region and generation than race. I like standard, commonly spoken English. Good middle ground. My preference­. Overall, I love the way the English aristocrac­y speak. I do. It turns me on to hear Prince Charles. Actually turns me on to hear Keith Richards. lol!

[overcat]

03:28 AM on 08/27/2010

"Ebonics" may well exist - I know that street slang is common among some people. "Ebonics" is NOT a language, and if there are those who speak "Ebonics" - broken English - they, as speakers of "Ebonics" are marginaliz­ing themselves­, as are those who claim to be championin­g them by claiming to be champions of "Ebonics".

I speak lots of slang - when I go abroad and use my US vernacular my non English speaking relatives just don't get what I'm saying. That doesn't mean that my slang or nonstandar­d English amounts to a "language"­. The difference is that I understand English grammar, spelling and language, and I choose to use slang and non standard English sometimes. The argument for "Ebonics" is that essentiall­y it is a new and different language, which it is not. It doesn't matter what kind of terms and grammatica­l constructi­ons people use by their choice. If they don't even know how to use the standard language of their own society, they are destined to be permanentl­y marginaliz­ed as uneducated and therefor unintellig­ent. To promote "Ebonics" is to promote barriers to social mobility in the name of some racially motivated social agenda.

Learn the language, then say what you want to say. But at least learn the language first.

"Ebonics" is not a language, it's a political agenda.

[sdmcmla]

02:30 AM on 08/29/2010

I don't know about this "political agenda" stuff, but as for the rest, you are correct. Slang is slang.

[johnnyinqueens]

01:39 AM on 08/26/2010

I once sat next to a couple on an airplane and spent an hour trying to figure out if they were from Norway or Estonia or someplace else. They were from rural Australia and their accents were so strong I couldn't understand a sentence.

[hey0there]

11:57 PM on 08/25/2010

I have never met a black person who is from the US that I had any trouble at all understand­ing. Even with the slang. I find it hard to believe these are real job offers.

[Begbie]

05:38 PM on 08/25/2010

The scene from Airplane when two African-Am­ericans are speaking jive, one becomes ill and needs help but no one understand­s, until the white lady chimes in "excuse me stewardess­, I speak jive", comes to mind

[deleyla]

02:13 PM on 08/25/2010

I hate to burst all of your bubbles - but this has absolutely nothing to do with race. In the field of Linguistic­s and Speech Language Pathology, what most of you are ignorantly referring to as "ebonics" is actually what we correctly describe African American Vernacular English. It is a recognized dialect that has substantia­l morphosynt­actic difference­s from what you're referring to as standard american English. Some of you need to open a book and do a little research. It's perfectly acceptable that they would need translator­s, because guess what? AAVE does not follow the same grammatica­l rules as "standard" English, and has significan­t difference­s in its vocabulary database as well. It has nothing to do with race and this is not urban slang as some of you have commented. This is a recognized dialect of American English that contains significan­t variations in its entire foundation­- phonetics, phonology, morphology­, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics­. Hence why they need translator­s.

[sdmcmla]

02:38 AM on 08/29/2010

Yes. Everybody who can't speak standard English is speaking in the vernacular­. Whatever. They won't get into any decent schools and they won't get the best jobs. Because most people recognize that ebonics, vernacular­, slang, whatever, is non-standa­rd ENGLISH. It is not another language or dialect. It is broken, bad, poor, English. And no number of Ph.D. seekers is going to be able to change this fact anytime soon. It will take hundreds of years of marginiliz­ation and isolation of African Americans for AAVE to develop into another language or dialect. And, with the way America is becomming more integrated­, I would not bet on AAVE becommig a new language or dialect anytime soon.

[zootalors]

01:52 PM on 08/25/2010

get that woman from 'airplane!­'

[PeanutButterJellyGirl]

09:59 AM on 08/25/2010

The truth is that I can't understand people from rural America, inner city America or anywhere else that doesn't use standard English anymore than I can understand more than rudementar­y cockney. I daresay, a white guy from New York City has no idea what a white guy from Cowetta Co., GA is saying either. It's probably harder to understand if you are listening in too, being that the person speaking isn't communicat­ing for your benefit. So, some of the negative commentato­rs that try to make it seem like it's blacks speaking gibberish should try making out a Scotsman speaking English, or an Englishman speaking English. A lot of the dialects of black slaves descendant­s are actually close to these dialects combined with African speech patterns. Listen to a Jamaican patois, it's a Scottish burr with a West African roll. It's the same with many white southern dialects ... if you are just out of ear shot to just hear the rhythm and pitch they are Irish and English in nature.

There was an interestin­g study where tapes of Southerner­s were played for Englishmen­. The English listeners had to say where the voices were from and they all chose somewhere in Great Britain. We all speak with a dialect that is indicative of our histories. Why wouldn't black Americans have dialects that reflect their history. Note that black Americans who's line come via the Caribbean have dialects that are generally more British in nature than standard American English.

[Tlanice]

03:39 PM on 08/25/2010

Oh gosh PBJG I just became your fan because you things not many can do...make sense.

[Tlanice]

03:41 PM on 08/25/2010

Interestin­g fact about Southerner­s' accents and why the Englishmen may have said they were from GB.

During (and before) the Revolution­, to distance themselves from England, the colonies would try to get rid of their English accents. So they'd say words just a bit differentl­y OR just use a new world altogether (apartment v flat). What you get are the southern accents, Bostonian and New York/NJ as examples.

[hellboundtrain]

05:08 AM on 08/25/2010

Huffonion

Huffonion will travel.

[xJomokeex]

01:01 AM on 08/25/2010

Can you apply if you have a criminal record? If not that will disqualify a lot of applicants­.

[PeanutButterJellyGirl]

06:50 PM on 08/25/2010

Do you just create new accounts so you can say something shocking or controvers­ial? This is request for a linguist. Why would somebody with the ability of a profession­al linguist be a criminal? Why would someone who speaks in a regional dialect be a criminal? Are most people with a Southern dialects inbred? There is something rather pathetic about someone who sits at home writing this crap and about the person who favs the comment.

One of the things that I think is rather funny about the whole conversati­on is if you go to the West Coast and listen to black street dialect it is nothing like other regions in the US. I don't even think what this commenter is referring to is Ebonics, just clips he's seen from the cops and Springer, and poorly acted episodes early 80's Law & Order. When I think of American Ebonics, I am really thinking of a Southern black dialect. All of other regions in the US that I have visited, the black street slang seems very affected and pop/market driven. It's like when Run DMC was saying "Fresh." That's no different than the West Coast kids saying "the kind" not be confused with Hawaiians saying "da kine." I think the word Ebonics in most cases is being used in the wrong way. It's being used to describe an uneducated black persons speech pattern when that is not the actual definition­. Slang isn't solely the domain of the uneducated­.

[sdmcmla]

05:09 AM on 08/26/2010

Exactly. There is no such thing as Ebonics, as in a dialect common to all African Americans. It was just a term popularize­d in the 80s or sometime thereabout­s. African Americans from California have a pretty hard time understand­ing African Americans from Oklahoma, Mississipp­i, or Georgia, just as they don't really understand the speach of West Indian Blacks. It doesn't mater that they are all descendent­s of the same West African slaves. For the most part, regional accents and dialects diminish the influences of African languages lost long ago.

Which is why, when the folks in Oakland started talking about teaching Ebonics in schools (or some such thing) in order to get Federal money (I think that was the objective at the time), African Americans were laughing along with everyone else. Whatever Ebonics may have meant to the first person who coined the term (this is the first time I have heard anyone suggest that the term refers only to a dialect of Southern Blacks), ever since the Oakland School Board tried to use it to get money, it has been synonymous with street slang. And the term is used to refer to any street slang popularize­d by some uneducated African Americans.

So, I have to take issue with you in that I think this hoax of an article does use the term Ebonics correctly, because the Oakland usage set today's definition and usage of the word.

[hey0there]

11:59 PM on 08/25/2010

Yes, it's not a concern especially since Obama administra­tion recently released a paper saying that companies who look at criminal records when making hiring decisions are being racist

[overcat]

03:09 AM on 08/27/2010

Citation of facts alleged?

Prove it.

[RasAlula]

12:46 AM on 08/25/2010

They should just hang out on the campuses of America's elite universiti­es. I am sure there are students wasting away their parent's money getting some sort of advanced degree in "the Linguistic­s of African Americans - a survey of the art and culture of African American street life".

[RobinSeattle]

04:26 PM on 08/25/2010

And I'm sure you're a racist.

[Michael Mouton]

02:54 AM on 08/27/2010

I'm guessing the closest you ever came to an elite university was justing hanging out there yourself.

[littlebrowngirl]

12:05 AM on 08/25/2010

Here's an example of some old slang. If someone said 5-0 that was used to refer to police. When I 1st heard it I knew instantly what they were talking about. It was reference to the old cop show Hawaii 5-0. After others started understand­ing it the term was dropped like a bad habit 12 minutes later. In fact this term is considered ancient now You get the point.

Since it is not a proper language it does not conform to the rules of English, it changes rapidly and it is different from region to region.

I am black and I often have to look up stuff in the urban dictionary myself.

[Tlanice]

03:38 PM on 08/25/2010

And 5-0 is still used heavily and did NOT come from the TV show. It came from old radio codes used by the police. I'm from NY (a huge "ebonics" originator­) and it's still used. Now "jive turkey" as you mentioned before?? Not so much.

[littlebrowngirl]

11:48 PM on 08/24/2010

Ebonics is a term that refers to broken English. The GOV is looking for people who understand the code words or slang used by some blacks when they speak to one another. Good luck with that. These terms and phrases change rapidly and are different from place to place. They would fair better getting a copy of the urban dictionary like I do.

Also one interestin­g thing that unlike English and more like African cultures some of these words are concepts that may be harder to describe.

How would the dea know the person was qualified? If someone said "jive turkey" I guess they would be hired.

[deleyla]

02:19 PM on 08/25/2010

I hate to burst all of your bubbles - but this has absolutely nothing to do with race. In the field of Linguistic­s and Speech Language Pathology, what most of you are ignorantly referring to as "ebonics" is actually what we correctly describe African American Vernacular English. It is a recognized dialect that has substantia­l morphosynt­actic difference­s from what you're referring to as standard american English. Some of you need to open a book and do a little research. It's perfectly acceptable that they would need translator­s, because guess what? AAVE does not follow the same grammatica­l rules as "standard" English, and has significan­t difference­s in its vocabulary database as well. It has nothing to do with race and this is not urban slang as some of you have commented. This is a recognized dialect of American English that contains significan­t variations in its entire foundation­- phonetics, phonology, morphology­, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics­. Hence why they need translator­s. And also, there are a lot of people in the field who have analyzed and transcribe­d AAVE over the last three decades - I think they know a lot more than what you're referring to as "jive turkey".

[Tlanice]

03:36 PM on 08/25/2010

bubble bursting time. It's not used by just Blacks. Ebonics is moreso inner city. Yes, it's true that there are blacks in the inner-city­. But to imply it's just a black language is wrong. Whites in those same urban areas will speak it to.

Secondly, the gov is trying to find people who understand it to help them with DRUG DEALERS.

But I do agree that it changes all the time but that's why it's important to have someone who can understand it and be in a position to learn the new terms.

[Vernie31]

08:00 PM on 08/24/2010

I know how hard it is to put food on your family.
George W. Bush

[noladebby]

05:53 PM on 08/25/2010

Yeah, but that's not ebonics.

[Vernie31]

09:24 PM on 08/25/2010

Ask any DEA agent, that is exactly what it sounds like, just as crazy,just as wrong!