Training a military on new weapons and doctrine while its at war and English is not the first language presents its own challenges. I speak multiple languages but I don't think I can translate for my country if ever the need came because of the very specific vocabulary and concept required in a military nomenclature. Business or coloqual is different than military context.
Its impressive: they have had to find competent translators across the non-major languages (such as Danish) to pull this off.
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Financial Times US29 Aug 2023
Military
Kyiv troops training abroad face language hitch
Transfer of skills slowed by lack of interpreters familiar with specialist terms
LAURA PITEL — KLIETZ Additional reporting by Richard Milne in Oslo and Felicia Schwartz in Washington
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Teaching inexperienced soldiers how to operate a tank on the front line in just six weeks was never going to be easy.
But when German, Dutch and Danish officers gathered in a lush green patch of the north German countryside to train Ukrainians, they were not expecting a shortage of competent interpreters to be the biggest issue.
“Interpreters are challenge number one,” said Martin Bonn, a Dutch brigadier general who is deputy head of the multinational EU training mission launched in November to educate Ukrainians on a range of weapons and tactics. Kyiv and western capitals are providing translators, who often struggle with the necessary vocabulary.
By the end of the year, 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers will have received training in Germany, part of a broader western drive to equip the Ukrainian armed forces with tanks, artillery and air defence systems that has seen 63,000 recruits dispatched by Kyiv to attend training camps in Europe and the US.
“The big challenge is the translation of words used in a military or technical context . . . Words no one uses in everyday life,” Bonn said after Ukrainian soldiers took part in a tank firing exercise at a military base near Klietz in northeastern Germany.
European trainers were full of praise for the “tremendous motivation” of the recruits, despite the stress of the brutal war they are fighting and the daily dangers to friends and family back home.
But they also said that the age and ability of the soldiers they are sent varied wildly, as Ukrainian commanders on the front line were often unwilling to spare their best. One volunteer who turned up in Germany was 71 years old.
Ukrainian soldiers expressed satisfaction with what they learned in Klietz about the Leopard 1 A5 tank, an older and less sophisticated version of the Leopard 2 that garnered international attention this year as Germany resisted pressure to supply it to Kyiv. But they stressed that newer weapons were always preferable to older ones.
Ukrainian soldiers and their trainers are acutely aware that Kyiv has failed to make the progress it had hoped for in the counteroffensive against Vladimir Putin’s forces, which began in June.
The tough terrain, Russia’s sophisticated electronic warfare and its use of drones are three problems confronting Ukrainian troops, said Bonn. “This is very difficult,” the Dutch brigadier general said. “We are looking at ways to prepare the Ukrainians to operate in such an environment.”
Officials from other western nations have voiced frustration at differences of opinion over strategy and tactics for countering Russia. That view was echoed by one of the German trainers in Klietz. He had experienced friction with older Ukrainian commanders who were trained in Soviet times and sometimes “think they know better”.
But western militaries — whose most recent combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan differs hugely from the traditional war being fought in Ukraine — also say they are learning from the Ukrainian armed forces.
Germany is not the only country to have struggled with translation issues during training programmes. A similar problem has reared its head in Denmark, where Ukrainian pilots and support staff are being trained to fly F-16 fighters at Skrydstrup air base.
Danish military officials said the training — which became more urgent after Copenhagen this month made a joint pledge with the Netherlands to donate their fighter jets to Ukraine — was being held up by security clearance for the pilots. Language skills and health checks were further reasons for the delay, officials said.
Nick Reynolds, a research fellow for land warfare at Rusi, the UK think-tank, said it was difficult for western training to meet the expectations of both sides.
Kyiv is eager for more combined arms training that involves exercises with tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery, infantry and drones to more closely replicate conditions that exist on the battlefield, but such exercises can be risky. He said western nations had low tolerance for accidents and their approach “doesn’t mesh well with [Kyiv’s] requirements for trainees”.
There is also frustration about the weapons that western nations are delivering. Berlin in January bowed to demands to supply Kyiv with Leopard tanks. It is now in a debate about whether or not to agree to Kyiv’s request for Taurus cruise missiles, with Olaf Scholz, chancellor, fearful of the risk of escalation with Moscow.
The Leopard 1, which Berlin agreed to supply along with the Leopard 2, is being refurbished before being sent to Ukraine. The tank has thin armour that can leave it vulnerable in areas with little cover, such as the flat terrain in eastern and south-eastern Ukraine where some of the most intense fighting is taking place.
Nevertheless, Yevhenii, an electrical engineer from eastern Ukraine who admits to having driven a tank for only a “short time” before being sent to Klietz for training, said it had “significant advantages over the Russian T72 tanks”.
