Now that the U.S. government has Osama bin Laden’s computers and thumb drives securely in hand and stored at the FBI’s facilities in Langley, Virginia (to make sure they’re in the right chain of command in case the evidence they produce will be uncontestable if used in court), the race is on to decipher what they say.  Word is that Arabic translators are in hot demand to scour the data to discover what new, nepharious plots and individuals we aren’t aware of should be followed up or hunted down. 

If I were an Arabic translator with government clearance right now, I’d be jumping on the government’s doorstep to get a piece of the action.  Not only would it be guaranteed work, it would be national-defense-quality important work.  Can you imagine the responsibility for getting the translation precisely right on that job?  You certainly don’t want to mess up that baby!

It’s good to see that foreign languages are still making headlines–even though it took ten years and a scumbag like Osama bin Laden to make the need for Arabic translation the next big thing.