According to recent news stories,
we face a big difficulty finding enough Arabic translators for the volumes of intel that we're bringing in. Of course, it would be nice if we would stop firing military translators just for being gay. But it would also be nice if our government would stop treating Arab-Americans as assumed criminals.
Anyway, here's my idea: recruit the Arab-American community for people willing to translate low-priority intercepts (the kind which are piling up). Break up the audio into short mp3 files. Then mail them in CDs to the translators at home, who would then email the translations back. It could be part-time work for stay-at-home moms or whoever, and paid on a per-disk basis. Accuracy could be cross-checked by having multiple people translate the same files, or by adding test files of known sentances being spoken.
This idea could also be used to provide jobs to Iraqis. Obviously it would have to be secret, as anybody found to be helping us could face death. But any Iraqi who speaks English and has a computer could be a big help, and it would help to reduce the terrible unemployment rate.