Multilingual workers can be an asset only if used properly

Bridges are incredibly useful and help many people reach important destinations quickly and easily. However, bridges can also be dangerous when misused, and exceeding a bridge's maximum load capacity can obviously result in disaster.

Similarly, bilingual workers can be incredibly beneficial and can help bridge the gaps many organizations must cross to expand internationally. In fact, some have partially credited the success of Utah's export sector, as highlighted in a recent report by the Brookings Institution, to the language skills many Utahns gain while serving two-year religious missions abroad. However, like use of physical bridges with maximum load capacities, use of bilingual workers as cultural bridges can also be dangerous if their capacities are not properly assessed and respected.

Like Utah, the U.S. State Department also has a remarkably high concentration of workers with second-language skills. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton experienced significant embarrassment in 2009 when the State Department did not understand and respect the limitations of some bilingual employees.

Clinton attempted to symbolize a "resetting" of the U.S.-Russian relations to Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov with a gift-wrapped red button labeled "Reset" in English and "Peregruzka" in Russian. Unfortunately, "peregruzka" means "overcharge" or "overload." The Russian word for "reset" is actually "pereZAgruzka" (emphasis added) or, more correctly, “перезагрузка” in the Cyrillic script used in Russia.

With cameras rolling, Clinton ironically assured Lavrov that the State Department "worked hard to get the right Russian word." To Clinton's dismay, Lavrov immediately pointed out the error to her and to the global audience. Oops!

The U.S. State Department has access to some of the world's finest translators and interpreters. Unfortunately, instead of working through its professional translation department, the State Department consulted an employee who was neither a native speaker of Russian nor a professional linguist. The translation was later "checked" by another employee who was also a non-native speaker of Russian.

Translation disasters like this occur all too often when bilingual employees are utilized as if they were trained, specialized, native-speaking professional translators. In fact, websites like Engrish.com list new blunders like this every single day. Despite the efforts of such popular blooper-spotting websites, many organizations still mistakenly believe that bilingual ability automatically qualifies one as a translator.