Top jobs: Translator

We may take for granted that important national security issues such as nuclear disarmament require the skills of people with some technical knowledge and expertise in foreign languages to review and translate materials. Kevin Hendzel is one of those people.

Hendzel, the national spokesman for the American Translators Association (ATA), graduated from Georgetown University with a background in physics, electronic engineering and Russian language that included extended time at a university in Russia. His first serious assignment as a translator was as a technical translator on the U.S.-Russia Direct Communications Link, better known as the Presidential Hotline.

“It is not and never has been a red telephone,” says Hendzel. The image of a phone “is a clever Hollywood prop but has no basis in reality.”