Ft. Meade takes first in DLI Language Olympics

By Army SSgt. Tracy Singer
741st MI BN
Fort Meade, Md.

The Ft. Meade Joint Language Center took first place in the non-resident portion of the Defense Language Institute’s Worldwide Language Olympics.

The events were held via Video Tele-Training recently in the JLC. True to our joint nature, this year’s competition included Air Force, Army and Navy linguists from the 22nd, 91st, and 94th Intelligence Squadrons, 694th Operations Support Squadron, 741st and 742nd Military Intelligence Battalions, and Naval Security Group Activity, Fort Meade, Md.

The competition consisted of five events with each event designed to challenge different aspects of linguistic skill. Three of these events are administered locally.
- Get The Point -- competitors must read several foreign language texts, take notes, and answer questions based solely on their notes.
- Hand Copy -- challenges the linguists’ ability to listen to audio texts, take notes on these texts, and answer questions, again based on their notes.
- What’s My Job -- an event in which team members attempt to determine what profession is being discussed in a video-taped conversation.

The remaining two events are administered by the staff of the Defense Language Institute, Presidio of Monterey, Calif., via the VTEL Video Tele-Training equipment in the JLC. This system allows two or more parties to see and hear one another in real time.

The Picture Perfect event requires one teammate to describe pictures displayed on a television screen to the other teammate who writes down as much information about the picture as possible.

Finally, in PowerWord, team members attempt to lead their partner to a particular word, without using that word or any of four other taboo words. For example, try to describe the word airplane without using the words: air, plane, wing, fly, or pilot -- you get the picture.

As some readers may remember, last year Ft. Meade placed second in the overall competition to Goodfellow AFB, Texas, but revenge is sweet. This year our teams won in a decided victory over second place Goodfellow.

Other major competing units came from Ft. Gordon Ga., Medina Annex, Texas, Ft. Bragg N.C., Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz., and Camp LeJeune, N.C.

In the coming days we will be collecting many medals from each of the competitions. The results are as follows for the Ft. Meade Joint Language Center: Arabic -- 3rd Place overall Chinese -- 1st Place overall Korean -- 3rd Place overall Persian-Farsi -- 3rd Place overall Spanish -- 4th Place overall Russian -- 1st Place overall

The staff and cadre of the Joint Language Center would like to thank the following Ft. Meade soldiers, sailors and airmen for representing the FMJLC and congratulate them on their success: Spc. Eileen Cowen, Spc. Elizabeth Weitzell, TSgt. Tony Costello, Petty Officer 2nd Class Chad Wilkins, Spc. Brandon Howell, SSgt. Chris Phillips, SrA. Antonio Medina, SrA. Alice Orlikowski, SrA. Oleg Yarin, TSgt. Steve Souleyrette, Spc. Michelle Ehrlich, Army Staff Sgt. Brian Corson, MSgt. Dennis Harper, MSgt. Jeff Martin, SrA. Wendy Hertel, A1C Allen Jepsen, Army Sgt. Scott Minor, Spc. Malcom Warbrick, Spc. Russel Graham, Spc. David Husler, TSgt. Donnie Weber, Spc. Efren Laporte and Petty Officer 2nd Class Roccio Thornton.