• Bipartisan group supports addressing ‘strategic disadvantage’ and understanding adversaries who pose ‘serious threat to American national security’
• Open Translation Centre tasked with training analysts and linguists comes amid challenges getting accurate information out of China

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers introduced a bill on Thursday that would establish a research centre charged with creating publicly accessible English translations of open-source materials from China.

The initiative, to be known as the Open Translation Centre, would also train analysts and linguists to specialise in China and other countries, a full list of which will be determined later.

“The United States can’t afford to be in a position where our competitors know more about us than we know about them,” said Democratic congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas, the bill’s sponsor.

“For generations, Congress supported open-source translation programmes that helped Americans understand both our allies and our adversaries. As our investment in those programmes [has] declined, countries like China and Russia have accelerated their own – putting us at a strategic disadvantage,” he continued.

Source: https://www.scmp.com/?module=masthead&pgtype=article

Full article: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3258714/us-lawmakers-unveil-bill-set-research-centre-translating-open-source-materials-china