Need for Language Skills Stressed

Federal agencies have growing needs for employees to speak certain foreign languages—especially Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Russian, Farsi and Pashto—but are having trouble finding or developing people with that proficiency, according to the Partnership for Public Service. It said that more than 80 agencies employ individuals with skills in more than 100 different languages, but the shortage of qualified foreign language speakers has hampered them, for example by building up a backlog of untranslated counterterrorism materials.