Dr Fakherdin focuses on role of translators in Middle East wars
Kuwait Alumni Society organizes event
Top and above: Some more photos from the farewell party.
KUWAIT CITY, Aug 26: Expert in Linguistics and Translation Dr Tareq Fakherdin affirmed the importance of translators and cited the role translators played in the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, reports Al-Qabas daily.
Dr Fakherdin disclosed this recently while delivering a lecture on the role of translators in the Middle East wars during an event organized by Kuwait Alumni Society, as part of the activities of second summer books exhibition. He documented series of stories, incidents and secrets concerning the role of translators and their plights at some flashpoints within the Middle East.
He started the lecture by espousing the role of translators in regional wars and the kind of difficulties they face, because translators are not fighters and they are neither trained to defend themselves with weapons.
Talking about the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, he said the allied forces needed a large number of translators that were not readily available. This led the allied forces to engage foreign companies in multimillion dollar contracts under the clause “language services”.
He stated the US Forces that participated in liberating Kuwait employed 500 Kuwaiti translators, and the only sign of them was through a story published by the Los Angeles Newspaper titled “untold story” since none of the translators had revealed the whole story.
He noted those translators were trained in the US and deployed alongside the US army to translate phone conversations by the Iraqi soldiers, tapping information before and during the war.
Dr Fakherdin later moved to another hot spot, Iraq, and said the translators employed by the US Army were exposed to danger during the liberation of Iraq. They also aroused suspicion of the US forces, besides their exposure to explosives. The Army suspected them of leaking plans and movement of troops to the other party. Needless to say, some translators were giving misleading information during investigations in Iraqi cells for personal motives, he noted.
He also said translators faced a difficult situation in Afghanistan on one hand and contributed to the game of revenge on the other hand by inciting the tribes and villages against each other for personal gain, which led to the killing of numerous civilians and several errors.