A Guide to Becoming an FBI Special Agent - Languages You Need to Study to Get the Job

The FBI favors candidates who have foreign-language skills. Special Agents are not required to speak another language, but if you want to be a competitive candidate, learn one of these languages. They have a select group of languages that they consider essential skills among those applying for Special Agents, while there is a larger list for those who would like to work as a linguist for the FBI. This article covers those languages deemed "critical skills" for Special Agents. Check out the FBI's career page for a full list of languages they need linguists for.

Middle East

Skilled readers and speakers of Middle Eastern languages are in high demand right now. With the war in Iraq and the War on Terror, intelligence agencies are in desperate need for translators to process the information they receive.

The University of Texas at Austin has a Middle Eastern Studies department. Students can study Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish. Degree programs are offered at undergraduate, masters, and PhD levels. The University of California at Berkeley also has a Middle Eastern Studies department. These programs will allow you to get an overview of the Middle East area, while learning one of the Middle Eastern languages. Pashto is spoken in Afghanistan, and it is extremely difficult to find skilled speakers of it, because it is not taught in major Middle Eastern programs.

Arabic is spoken in many Middle Eastern countries: Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Morocco, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Kuwait, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and more. The largest group of immigrants of Arabic origin in the United States is from Lebanon, according to 2000 census data. While FBI Agents can rely on linguists to provide translations of intelligence information, the agents themselves need to be able to speak the languages to communicate with various communities present in the United States. According to a Washington Post article, five years after 9/11, only 33 FBI agents had limited proficiency in Arabic.

Asia

The FBI considers Vietnamese, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Punjabi, Urdu, and all dialects of Chinese to be critical skills for Special Agents. Pashto is also spoken in some Asian countries. Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, and are all among the languages spoken in India. Punjabi, Pasto, and Urdo are spoken in Pakistan. Punjabi is the most widely spoken, with 48% of the residents of Pakistan speaking it as a first language, according to the CIA World Factbook.

Where can you learn these languages? You could choose a school like The University of Georgia which offers classes in Chinese, Hindi, Korean, and Vietnamese. Due to limited demand, these languages are only taught at lower levels, and there are no degree programs in them. They can be taken as electives while you complete a degree in a different subject.

Several schools offer graduate programs in Asian languages. Among these are George Washington University, Florida State University, and the University of New York. The University of California at Los Angeles has an Asia Institute, which offers many of these languages, and a listing of language study programs sponsored by other universities.

Other

The two final languages on the FBI's list are Russian and Spanish. The FBI wants their Special Agents to have language skills to communicate with United States communities. While Spanish-speaking countries may not register high on the terrorist-threat radar, there is a large Spanish-speaking community in the US.

Sources:

Eggen, Dan. "FBI Agents Still Lacking Arabic Skills." Washington Post. 11 October 2006.

www.fbijobs.gov