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Feds looking for experts who speak Ebonics: report

ATLANTA — The feds are looking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of drug dealers, according to federal records.

A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a “DEA Sensitive” security clearance, will help authorities decipher the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media,” thesmokinggun.com reported today on its website.

The DEA’s need for linguists specializing in Ebonics is outlined in documents related to the agency’s request for proposal issued in May, the site reported.

Ebonics has been described as a variant of English spoken by African-Americans. John Rickford, a Stanford University professor of linguistics, has described it as “Black English.”

The DEA’s Atlanta office also requires linguists for eight other languages, including Spanish Vietnamese and Korean.

With AP