Putting the Truba Tapes in Context

Scandalous leaks of illicit recordings reveal politically motivated investigations

Ukrainians have known for years that foreign linguistic experts pick up on much less in conversation than native speakers. However, few expected that the time would come when the standard of competency turns out to be the ability to construe accurately what have been officially classified as state secrets.

While the participants in recordings made last year in the office of Roman Truba, former director of Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigations (SBI), seem to understand exactly what they are saying, the leaders of foreign governments and their emissaries in Kyiv are still struggling to keep up, at least publicly.

Much is taken for granted between the speakers recorded and important communications take place without explicit linguistic reference. To the uninformed and tin-eared, the flow of words seems continuous, despite clear markers of the boundaries of meaningful information.

Professional transcribers know, of course, that listening comprehension is a classic learn-by-doing task, in…