TheCodeBreakers
been expected to take geologic eons, was completed in just four days.
The intercepts ordinarily needed to be translated, and translation was
the bottleneck of the MAGIC production line. Interpreters of Japanese were
even scarcer than expert cryptanalysts. Security precluded employing
Nisei or any but the most trustworthy Americans. Through prodigious
efforts in 1941 the Navy doubled its GZ translation staff —to six. These
included three whom Kramer called "the most highly skilled Occidentals
in the Japanese language in the world."
But ability in standard Japanese alone did not suffice. Each
translator had to have at least a year's experience in telegraphic
Japanese as well before he could be trusted to come through with the
correct interpretation of a dispatch. This is because telegraphic Japanese
is virtually a language within a language, and, as McCollum, himself a
Japanese-language officer, explained, "the so-called translator in this
annaabi.ee 
