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Portuguese vs Hindi practicality | ||
Tags: Hindi | Portuguese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4459 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 25 of 31 28 February 2014 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is certainly true. I work in an office full of software developers. We have plenty of non-native English speakers with varying levels of English ability. All that's required is of their language skills is that it not be a struggle to understand them. We hire them for their other skills (programming).
You'd not hire anyone: you'd outsource that function to a translation company. I recently ordered some new business cards. Ours optionally have a rendition of your name in Japanese. I supplied how I wanted my name in katakana and it went off to the outside company to be "vetted". It came back unchanged. I can't imagine why we need to do this with (currently) three native Japanese speakers in the office, but we did (and do). Unless you plan to be a translator, your languages open a door that allows you to work in other places or your languages allow you to interact with customers in their own language. That's a valuable asset but only in an employee who is already worth employing in your organisation. So I'd say to @knchcanada, by all means study a language but don't expect that to necessarily get your foot in the door for you anywhere. That's usually what your otehr skills are for. Edited by dampingwire on 28 February 2014 at 8:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4182 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 26 of 31 28 February 2014 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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...if I'm a CEO of a big company and need to translate documents from English to Spanish/French/ whatever, am I going to hire somebody that has intermediate-level skill of several languages or just hire somebody that is a C2/native speaker to translate from English to Spanish? Then hire another person to do English to French and so on? The only way the multilingual intermediate speaker would win out is if they offered really low rates to do the job or offered to translate more languages for the same price as one. Correct me if I'm wrong translators, but I believe that professional translaters only work in about three languages max and usually only translate from their foreign language INTO their native language(s). Granted, companies may not care that much about the quality of translation work, judging from the very shoddy users manuals guides I've read in Spanish. :( And these are big companies like DELL or IBM or GE.[/QUOTE] I do not think you have to be C2 in a language to benefit from it in your career , very few people would otherwise .of course for certain tasks you need a translator , but I guess a company can profit from language knowledge also in other ways . A Good B2 can already turn out very useful in my opinion . Steve kaufmann says he would be comfortable doing buisness in most of his languages , although he considers himself a good intermediate in the majority of them . anyhow i truly believe that the first motivation to learn a language should not be money or your career . 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6391 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 27 of 31 28 February 2014 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Very true. And translation is just one of the many possibilities. In many industries B2 or even B1 is very useful, and especially in Europe it's not uncommon to be B2 or higher at English, B1+ in one of German/French/Spanish, and B1 or less at something else. For some reason there's this assumption that if you learn/speak multiple languages, your best one can't be significantly better than your weakest one.
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| culebrilla Senior Member United States Joined 3791 days ago 246 posts - 436 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 28 of 31 01 March 2014 at 12:23am | IP Logged | |||||
I do not think you have to be C2 in a language to benefit from it in your career , very few people would otherwise .of course for certain tasks you need a translator , but I guess a company can profit from language knowledge also in other ways . A Good B2 can already turn out very useful in my opinion . Steve kaufmann says he would be comfortable doing buisness in most of his languages , although he considers himself a good intermediate in the majority of them . anyhow i truly believe that the first motivation to learn a language should not be money or your career .[/QUOTE] Saying that you are "comfortable doing business" and actually being able to do so are two different things. I'm comfortable doing a lot of things and think I'm good at them but would never be hired since there are people that are better at the hobbies that I am good at. Your perception of your skills and what you can do are not the same, obviously. Steve's Spanish is, for example, solid for somebody that doesn't practice it that much and hasn't spoken it much. Would I want him teaching Spanish in my hypothetical Spanish institute or as a conversation instructor? Of course no. I personally know a lot of non-native Spanish speakers that are better than him, which is not a diss at Mr. Kaufman, just the facts. Also, with an intermediate level in a language you HAVE to combine it with something. With engineering, computer engineering, whatever. If you just speak a bunch of languages ok that ain't gonna put bread on the table. If I were to hire translators directly or indirectly via a company doesn't matter. It is the same thing. I would still instruct the company to find competent, C2/native translators. Well, I guess I could hire sucky Spanish speakers to do some of the translations for some users guides I've seen but that's not a smart idea to me... ...one of my Chilean friends told me that he thinks that a lot of the US Post Office material in Spanish is translated by American-born Mexican Americans (chicanos) since it is not grammatically correctly Spanish. I don't think I ever said (if I did I didn't mean to) that a C2 was needed to benefit from a language. If it is going to be the ONLY thing you have going on then yes, you will need a VERY high level to be a translator or interpreter. But if you just COMBINE it with other skills a B2 is probably fine. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lykeio Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4038 days ago 120 posts - 357 votes | Message 29 of 31 01 March 2014 at 11:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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We have to stop acting like speaking a language comes down to a mutually exclusive
opposition of "I speak it will/I do not", especially when it comes to translating. It depends as much, or more so, on the background of the translator does it not? I would never trust a random native speaker to translate a legal document. But a secondary language learner with the requisite legal background? Sure. Often translating is something to do with specialist knowledge as much as the language itself. As with people from the disaspora within a country (so let us take a child of a Mexican immigrant to the USA) you'd be surprised at how much variation there is in such people when it comes to their second language. How many are fully literate in said language? engaged in its literally or at least a technical tradition? I'd be wary of hiring anyone regardless of background without the requisite formal qualifications. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Qaanaaq Newbie United States Joined 3918 days ago 14 posts - 25 votes Speaks: English* | Message 30 of 31 05 March 2014 at 10:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The Hindi program seems like an incredible opportunity. I'd jump on that chance if I were you (keep in mind that
I'm not you though). You can easily learn Portuguese by yourself in your spare time. It's not so hard. I feel like Hindi would be more difficult to "just pick up". Going to India would be amazing. Even if you end up hating it - I had a friend who did a program in India and didn't enjoy it - you will still learn a lot. IMO, go for India. Life is short. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| culebrilla Senior Member United States Joined 3791 days ago 246 posts - 436 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 31 of 31 07 March 2014 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would push the OP to go for Hindi since they are both "influential" languages and because he wants to learn Hindi more it seems. But learning any language, even a Romance/Germanic language, is NOT easy. It is *relatively* easier but it is still going to take many years and many thousands of hours of work. Well, you can "pick it up" and learn it in few hours but you wouldn't be very good compared to people that have high levels in it. It's all relative. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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