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 US drug agency recruits speakers of ‘street slang’

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Intermediate

US drug agency recruits speakers of 

‘street slang’

Chris McGreal in Washington  

24 August, 2010   

The demand for large numbers of Spanish 

translators in America’s war on drugs will come 

as no surprise. But now, an attempt to recruit 

people who speak what some consider to be 

a homegrown United States language has put 

the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) 

in the unique position of seeking translators to 

understand what African Americans are saying to 

each other.

The DEA is hiring nine speakers of Ebonics. 

Ebonics is a term that appeared in the  

mid-1970s to describe US black vernacular 

English. The speakers of Ebonics will translate 

wiretaps and video surveillance tapes into 

standard American English. The translations will 

allow government agents to track criminal deals 

and provide evidence that will stand up in court.

Ebonics is described by some linguists as a 

kind of English that uses the grammar of African 

languages. But as it also includes many words 

that have been invented on the streets, others 

say it is just slang.

Nonetheless, the DEA is confused enough by 

the language to ask companies which provide 

translation services to find nine Ebonics 

translators. These translators will cover an area 

from Washington DC to New Orleans and Miami 

and even the Caribbean.

Not everyone agrees with this decision. 

American officials have in the past denied that 

Ebonics even exists.

“A lot of times people think you’re just dealing 

with a few slang words and that you can work 

your way around it,” John Rickford, a Stanford 

University linguistics professor, told the 

Associated Press. “But that’s not true –  

it’s a big vocabulary. There are some  

significant differences.”

Although many scholars do not accept that 

Ebonics is a language, it got nationwide attention 

in 1996 when a school board in Oakland, 

California decided to recognize it as a primary 

language and to offer classes taught in Ebonics.

The decision was criticized because people 

thought it would undermine African American 

children’s command of English. Jesse Jackson, 

the African American civil rights leader, 

described it as “an unacceptable surrender”. 

He later changed his position, saying he had 

misunderstood that the school’s intent was to 

use Ebonics to improve the students’ English.

“It seems ironic that schools that are serving and 

educating black children have not recognized 

this language,” said H Samy Alim, a Stanford 

linguistics professor. “Yet the police are 

recognizing that this is a language that they don’t 

understand. It tells us a lot about where we are 

socially in terms of recognizing African  

American speech.”

The DEA’s need for Ebonics translators was 

revealed in a document first published by The 

Smoking Gun (a website belonging to Turner 

Entertainment Digital Network that uploads 

material obtained from government and law 

enforcement sources, via freedom of  

information requests).

The DEA says it mostly needs speakers of 

Latin American Spanish but it is also seeking 

people fluent in 114 languages listed either as 

“common” or “exotic”. The common languages 

include Arabic, Farsi and Punjabi. On the 

exotic list are Baloch from Iran, Berber dialects, 

Chimora from Guam, Ibo from Nigeria  

and Norwegian.

The Ebonics translators will work in the Atlanta 

Field Division where there will be a similar 

number of Vietnamese, Korean and Laotian 

speakers – and 144 Spanish translators.

© Guardian News & Media 2010

First published in The Guardian, 24/08/10

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