How do you say 'devil dog' in Iraqi?

When the Marines put out a call for an Arabic refresher course, a University of Florida graduate snaps to attention.

Kathleen Diamond's language training company in Washington, D.C., received the rush order from the Defense Department in October. Wanted: immediate refresher courses in Iraqi Arabic for Marine linguists.

Diamond, whose company, LLE Inc., has had many government contracts through its 24 years in business, said the military's sudden interest in the Iraqi dialect didn't automatically tip her off to the approaching war.

"We're always getting requests for strange languages," said Diamond, LLE's president and chief executive and a 1968 graduate of the University of Florida. "In October we weren't thinking about war in Iraq. We put it all together afterwards."

LLE, founded by Diamond in 1979, provides interpretation, translation and language instruction and assessment in languages from Afrikaans to Zulu. Diamond, who has a master's degree in French from UF, said customers include major corporations, both in the United States and internationally, as well as government agencies.

After the call from the military in October, LLE quickly identified an experienced Iraqi teacher from its network of more than 300 independent consultants, rented a beach house near Camp Lejeune, N.C., and kicked off the classes in less than a week.

"Our accountant went nuts when he heard we rented a beach house, but everything was rush, rush, get it ramped up," said Diamond, whose company had about $3-million in sales last year, 25 percent from government contracts. "When the government calls up and says it needs something, flexibility is important."

The result was a series of two five-week sessions, with 15 Marines enrolled in each course. All students had prior training in Arabic from the military's language training school in Monterey, Calif. LLE's classes were intended as a refresher before the Marines were sent to Iraq to serve as key communicators in the field. Several students were pulled out of classes and shipped to Iraq even before the coursework was completed.

"It was a very live, dynamic thing," Diamond said.

For the first four weeks of each session, classes were held at Camp Lejeune and students reviewed everything from military vocabulary to Iraq's history, ethnic tribes and the role of women. For the final week, the students and staff lived together in the beach house, speaking only the Iraqi dialect from breakfast through lights out.

"One student said being in close proximity with that many people was tough, but we got feedback that the course was definitely beneficial," Diamond said. "And the commanders were happy."

So happy that they have signed another contract with LLE for additional language immersion classes at Camp Lejeune through September. While the initial contract was about $30,000 per session, the new one is for about $200,000 total. Languages requested by the Defense Department so far include modern standard Arabic, Albanian and Russian.

"They're not going into any other Arab dialect," Diamond said. "At least not yet. But we're basically on call."

LLE's government experience includes providing translation work for the State Department and putting together what Diamond called "Serbo-Turbo" classes for the military during the Kosovo war in the mid-1990s. "But we were given a month to prepare for those, as opposed to a week for the Iraqi courses," she said.

While Diamond is happy to have her company's expertise tapped by the military, she hopes to get involved in a proposed project using American businesswomen to mentor women in Afghanistan and Iraq as they help rebuild their countries.

"It's a brilliant idea, and we'd love to get involved, providing targeted, use-oriented immersion training before people travel to Afghanistan or Iraq," she said. "It would be very elemental and basic. It's not like all of us are going to learn Arabic anytime soon. But if you can't communicate at all, it makes everything much harder."

- Kris Hundley can be reached at hundley@sptimes.com or (727)892-2996.

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