Good afternoon Chairman Akaka, Ranking Member Voinovich, and members of the
Subcommittee. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the National
Virtual Translation Center's (NVTC) progress in enhancing the ability
of members of the intelligence community (IC) and our partners in law
enforcement to have accurate translations of critical information to
protect the American public. I am happy to join with my colleagues here
from the Department of Defense and Department of Education to discuss
with you the critical language needs necessary to protect our national
security.
The NVTC was established in February 2003 for the purpose of providing
timely and accurate translations of foreign intelligence for all elements
of the intelligence community. In February 2003, the Director of Central
Intelligence awarded executive agency authority of the NVTC to the FBI,
and I came to the center on February 11, 2003.
The NVTC's goal is to augment existing government translation capabilities
by: acting as a clearinghouse for facilitating interagency use of translators;
partnering with elements of the U.S. government, academia, and private
industry to identify translator resources and engage their services; building
a nationwide team of highly qualified, motivated linguists and translators,
connected virtually to our program office in Washington, D.C.; and applying
state-of-the-art technology to maximize translator efficiency.
The NVTC is an interagency element with a small but diverse office staff
that comes from different government agencies, academia, and industry and
provides expertise and experience in a variety of fields and organizations.
The team connects virtually to active-duty military personnel, reservists,
active and retired government employees, academia, and private industry.
The NVTC strives to be innovative, creative, and relevant as it meets the
challenges of today's national security.
The NVTC functions to develop new policies, procedures, and systems for
managing NVTC translation requirements and services. We have created a
virtual information sharing architecture that connects the translation
tasks, language resources, and linguists anywhere in the United States
of America. We are seeking to identify and utilize translation resources
from the U.S. government, academia, and private industry.
For instance, as a method of ensuring that the vital language applicants
to government agencies can be used while their clearances and background
investigations are taking place, the NVTC has offered to bring these people
aboard and get them working on unclassified overflow material from any
one of its 42 intelligence community customers. When the parent agency
is ready to bring them on full time, the NVTC releases them. We support
continued development and fielding of proven human language technologies,
designed to help process and exploit foreign language data.
Most important is who we do this for. Federal agencies decide when to
use the translation center. It's almost like a federal contractor. As with
most members of the intelligence community, the FBI relies on its own highly
trained linguists first. NVTC linguists are used when the FBI faces a critical
overload of intelligence, a tight deadline or translation needs in a specific
language for which it does not have resources.
The center, which provides timely and accurate translations of foreign
intelligence for U.S. agencies, isn't organized like a typical government
office. Most employees don't report to the same building: They work out
of secure government offices across the nation. Some work from home. They
all receive their work electronically, putting the "virtual" in
the center's name.
The NVTC has a shared database that contains up-to-date information on
available certified translators to conduct the work of the Center. We offer
access to an ever-increasing pool of translation resources that was previously
unavailable to the government. The Center is able to offer our customers
flexibility and responsiveness in finding the right translators with the
right skills at the right time and national connectivity among elements
of the U.S. government, academia, and the private sector.
The professionals who work for the NVTC are American citizens who have
passed a vigorous national security background check; have passed a comprehensive
language test; and come from all walks of life, including stay-at-home
parents and career professionals. These professionals face challenging
and varied work assignments and have access to a significant volume of
tasks in a variety of languages and topics. The Center offers the flexibility
to work full time, part time or, as needed, from home or from designated
government facilities, and also provides language tools to facilitate translation
efforts.
The NVTC has invited members of the American Translators Association and
the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators to participate
in this effort to provide translation services at a critical time to our
nation's security.
I would like to conclude by saying that the Center is an integral part
of the national intelligence community. The material is sent to the Center
comes from many sources, represents many languages, and varies in degrees
of sensitivity. But all of the information is important to the U.S. government's
ability to protect the nation from many threats, both in the homeland and
abroad. The Center is working to establish an innovative program to help
train future linguists by working with several colleges with translation
programs. Schools will receive unclassified documents that need translating
and have students do the work. Students will receive grades, school credit,
and valuable experience, and the Center will get more documents translated.
The NVTC participates in the Foreign Language Executive Committee of the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence and is also a member of
the ODNI Foreign Language Working Group. The ODNI provides the bulk of
the financial support for the NVTC budget, with FBI acting as executive
agent. The ODNI has also provided support that had enabled the NVTC to
develop advanced tools and technologies to support the IC language community.
Major projects have included the Language and Technology Resource Nexus,
which is a software system to facilitate secure information sharing among
language professionals, and the IC Parallel Corpora Database, a joint project
with the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, which will enable
government agencies to store and retrieve matched sets of documents in
the original language with their translations. This database will be invaluable
in supporting advances in machine translation as well as providing training
material for students of foreign languages.
I thank the Chairman and the Subcommittee for their interest in the important
critical need of the nation and look forward to answering any questions
you may have.
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