Review: Tactical Spanish for Dispatchers

To be clear, there is no simple way to learn a foreign language, especially for a speciality such as law enforcement or emergency communications. You must study, listen and practice to gain a useful level of communications with non-English speakers. But now the second edition of “Tactical Spanish” by Jose Blanco has been published, providing an organized and convenient method of learning the necessary words and phrases for handling 911 calls and other situations a public safety dispatcher might encounter. The product consists of a pocket-sized, spiral-bound book packed with short lessons and translations, and and a set of three audio CDs of pronunciations. Author Blanco is a former police officer who developed a Spanish language book several years ago. Now he has partnered with Lexis-Nexis to market this updated edition. The book is organized into short lessons on language, grammar and words at the front, and categories of common phrases at the back. Blanco includes people/vehicle descriptions, making stops and arrests, reports and emergency communications, “danger expressions,” slang, and gang information. Each section is organized into side-by-side columns of English and Spanish phrases, with the Spanish pronunciation included. The emergency communications section of the book is just 20 of the  book’s 151 pages. But translations from many other sections can also be useful to dispatchers. The CD set’s recordings are organized into sections like the book. Each recording consists of Blanco pronouncing the English-Spanish translations twice for clarity. I have a couple of quibbles: the book is printed on very thin paper that might tear out or get worn over time as you turn the pages to find translations. Also, when using an application like iTunes to play the CD recordings, the recordings aren’t titled or otherwise identified. Fortunately Blanco states the section name at the very beginning of each recording, which makes browsing easier. The book/CD set is available now from Lexis-Nexis on-line for $24. — Gary Allen, Editor