Breaking through the language barrier
By Sam Greene Posted Jul 1 2002
BRIAN WILLIAMS
It was May 1999, and, as I sat on an Albanian mountain top, peering down into Kosovo, I gave thanks for my high school French teacher.
In between the Yugoslav artillery rounds that sailed, happily, overhead, my interlocutor was telling me a rather disturbing story – in French. Like almost certainly all of the Western journalists covering the conflict, I spoke no Albanian. But the teacher turned rebel soldier also spoke French, as, after a fashion, did I. And so I was able to decipher the story he was trying to tell me about a man, identifying himself as a French journalist, who had visited that KLA base camp just a few weeks earlier. My new friend, Rexhep, had been giving him an interview when he noticed something strange. This Frenchman, Rexhep told me, spoke with something that very strongly resembled the accents of his Serbian students back in Pristina. Rexhep told his commander he thought the journalist was a spy.
“What happened to him?” I asked.
He just smiled, somewhat sheepishly.
“And how’s my accent?” I ventured.
“Not bad,” he said, nodding approvingly.
If Ms. LeMay only knew how right she was every time she told me to work on those nasal vowels.
My French, though, turned out to be useful for a lot more than keeping me on the right side of my KLA hosts. It was, frankly, what allowed me, as a freelancer, to cover the war in Kosovo. Few Kosovar Albanians spoke English, but a great number of them, it turned out, spoke French. In addition to Rexhep there was Shkodra Zenuni, the 16-year-old female commando who bid me an endearing “à toute à l’heure” before heading off for another day of clearing landmines. And there was the unfortunate, anonymous guard who had to exercise great restraint when I berated him for not letting me in to talk to his commander.
My college Russian, meanwhile, came in handy a few weeks later when, after NATO’s occupation of Kosovo, Serbs were much more willing to struggle though something Slavic than speak with me in English. And I wasn’t about to ask my Albanian translator for help.
For any journalist who finds him- or herself in an unfamiliar part of the world, language is always the first problem. Correspondents stationed on a more or less permanent basis somewhere around the world can often get by without interpreters, learning the language as they go. For some media outlets, it’s a matter of policy. Patrick Tyler, one of The New York Times’ correspondents in Moscow (now on assignment in the Middle East), told me the paper had paid for him to spend a year at Moscow State University studying the language and culture before taking up his four-year posting. The Times had also given him a similar preparatory year in Taiwan before beginning his earlier stint in Beijing.
But none of the reporters who left posts in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Moscow and elsewhere to cover Kosovo spoke Albanian, and as a result, Albanians who spoke English became a hot commodity. At one point, The New York Times was paying its interpreters $300 a day, more than most Albanians make in a month and more than many make even in a year. Between the reporters and the aid organizations, asking prices were driven so high that many freelancers were effectively priced out of the market. Those willing to work for less were far from professional. Countless reporters listened eagerly to a long tirade in Albanian only to have their interpreter turn to them and say, “He says no.” Interpreters not familiar with professional journalism – and they are the majority of interpreters in overnight-news towns in Albania or, now, Afghanistan – also often have to be prodded to maintain the hard-driving tone of an interview, even when it’s uncomfortable.
And there are other problems as well. In Albania, many of the interpreters available for hire at affordable rates were teenagers. As much as a reporter may feel the need for an interpreter, many found it difficult to justify bringing a minor into a war zone. In Russia’s Caucasus Mountains, where kidnapping is a major problem, news organizations often balk at sending translators at all.
As a result, many reporters try their best to do without interpreters. As vital as translators can be, especially in countries where languages that are rarely taught at Western universities are spoken, cutting them out of the picture tends to make for better journalism.
“Without the language, you really can’t develop personal stories, you can’t get inside the culture,” said Peter Pawinski, a freelance news photographer based in Budapest, Hungary. “Having somebody with you who knows the local language extremely well and who knows English extremely well can be a help, but it’s not the same thing.”
For a photographer, knowledge of the local language can mean getting subjects to open up or, perhaps more importantly, give permission to be photographed, Pawinski says. For a reporter, it can often make or break the story. Even the best interpreters can’t precisely convey the nuances of expression that can reveal the hidden emotions that make the best human-interest stories shine. And relying on English-speaking sources can skew reporters’ views of the society they arecovering. What’s more, reporters who speak the language can get deeper inside the culture they’re covering through unfiltered interaction with ordinary people on a daily basis.
Hence The New York Times’ training policy. In Moscow, where I’m based now, almost all of the major Western correspondents speak at least enough Russian to understand the gist of a conversation, even if they still rely on an interpreter for interviews. And if language is a useful reporting skill for staffers, it is a vital business tool for freelancers. Would-be stringers who don’t speak Russian tend not to last long in Moscow, nor do reporters without a grasp of local languages last long in other parts of the world. With most publications unwilling to compensate even their regular stringers for interpreters, except on special assignments to places like Albania or Afghanistan, the cost quickly puts many freelancers out of business.