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Language study vs jobs

  Tags: Jobs | Career
 Language Learning Forum : Languages & Work Post Reply
caleptaotao
Newbie
China
Joined 4806 days ago

3 posts - 4 votes

 
 Message 1 of 8
08 June 2012 at 10:36am | IP Logged 
People study foreign languages for various reasons. While in my case, it's to be my career.
Enchante,everyone.i am a postgraduate student from SISU(shanghai).
Here is a topic i would like to discuss with you guys:
According to a certain discussion my schoolmates recently had, students of Japanese are more likely to find a job than those of French,Spanish,Rssian,etc. Mainly because the Japanese own the most companies among the top 500 companies in the world.
I wonder what it is like for students of foreign languages in your countries. What do they usually do after graduation? Which language is the top one that's being studied in your country? Has the market reached saturation for students of languages?Hard to find a nice job there?

Edited by caleptaotao on 08 June 2012 at 11:26am

1 person has voted this message useful



vermillon
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4459 days ago

602 posts - 1042 votes 
Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin
Studies: Japanese, German

 
 Message 2 of 8
08 June 2012 at 12:45pm | IP Logged 
I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what the question is: which language is better for your career (generally speaking), or which language is better for a career focused on language? If the latter, for what kind of job? Translator, interpret?

I guess the best language to learn for interpretation / translation is in a pair that is not common, and therefore better paid when needed.
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caleptaotao
Newbie
China
Joined 4806 days ago

3 posts - 4 votes

 
 Message 3 of 8
08 June 2012 at 3:10pm | IP Logged 
[QUOTE=vermillon] I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what the question is: which language is better for your career (generally speaking), or which language is better for a career focused on language? If the latter, for what kind of job? Translator, interpret?

I guess the best language to learn for interpretation / translation is in a pair that is not common, and therefore better paid when needed.[/QUOTE
Apologies for the ambiguity. Let me put it this way: there are so many people, maybe too many,studying English and other languages in China, that good jobs are not easy to find. many so-called translators in China are poorly paid. in fact,many students of English in China end up with taking jobs that have nothing to do with English at alllll.
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freakyaye
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 4619 days ago

107 posts - 152 votes 

 
 Message 4 of 8
08 June 2012 at 6:56pm | IP Logged 
I think Japanese has an elusiveness people enjoy.
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Ogrim
Heptaglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 4420 days ago

991 posts - 1896 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian
Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian

 
 Message 5 of 8
08 June 2012 at 7:08pm | IP Logged 
If I understand the initial post correctly, people in China study Japanese because many of the biggest companies in the world are Japanese, so probably if you know Japanese you have a better chance of getting a job there. I cannot say if that is the case.
Here in Europe, English is and remains a must if you want to work for any big company. German, French or Spanish can be useful, but the language of business is English.

However, if you have studied nothing else but languages you are unlikely to get a job in a big company anyway - normally you need languages combined with something "useful", e.g. economics, business, engineering or marketing.

Students of languages normally end up as teachers or translators, or find another job in the public sector (that has nothing to do with languages). A few end up as interpreters, but you need to be really good to make a career out of that.

Edited by Ogrim on 08 June 2012 at 7:09pm

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lingua nova
Newbie
United States
Joined 4336 days ago

25 posts - 39 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Indonesian, Tagalog, French

 
 Message 6 of 8
09 June 2012 at 12:49am | IP Logged 
caleptaotao wrote:
Mainly because the Japanese own the most companies among the top
500 companies in the world.


Hmm, by what metric? For example, look at this article, which contains the world's
"largest companies" by year. In 2011, we have:

Japan - 68
USA - 133
Great Britain - 30
Canada - 11
Australia - 8


Just comparing Japan and the USA we already see the USA has twice as many entries on
that list as Japan. If you add other Anglophone countries--the UK, Australia, and
Canada--that number rises to 2.67 times as many. I'm not sure who told you that most of
the "top companies"--unless you mean something else by that phrase--were Japanese-
owned, but I highly doubt they're right.

Edited by lingua nova on 09 June 2012 at 12:50am

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vermillon
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4459 days ago

602 posts - 1042 votes 
Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin
Studies: Japanese, German

 
 Message 7 of 8
09 June 2012 at 10:17am | IP Logged 
lingua nova wrote:
Hmm, by what metric? For example, look at this article,


Sorry, which article? A simple count is obviously not the right metric anyway. "If" the situation was that Japan contained the 68 biggest companies of your top 250, then your showing 182 English speaking ones would bear absolutely no relevance.

Of course that's probably not the case, but I wanted to show the obvious limit of your example. I'm not very knowledgeable in this area, but I can easily think of big Japanese companies while not of any Canadia/Australian... (yes, there are some, but to me that suggests that they're maybe less big than the top Japanese ones).
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caleptaotao
Newbie
China
Joined 4806 days ago

3 posts - 4 votes

 
 Message 8 of 8
10 June 2012 at 4:40am | IP Logged 
lingua nova wrote
“the USA has twice as many entries on that list as Japan”
True as that might be,you ignored the ratio of students majored in Japanese. For every 100 students of language, there are 70 majored in English,less than ten in Japanene. So, it seems on some level, Japan owns more.


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