Languages

Being able to speak one or more languages other than English is useful in most careers, and particularly in career areas such as business and administration, buying and sales, ICT, finance, law, hospitality, the media, or in engineering, science and technology. And, of course, the ability to speak other languages would certainly help you get a job abroad. For most jobs, it is more important that you speak the language fluently than that you have qualifications in it. The top ten business languages as listed by The Telegraph newspaper are German, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Polish, Arabic, Cantonese, Russian, Japanese and Portuguese. And, in the UK many organisations, particularly local authorities, need staff who can speak languages such as Bengali, Farsi, Punjabi, Turkish and Urdu, as well as British Sign Language (BSL). If you are thinking of studying languages two web sites developed for young people in England by the Routes into Languages programme may be of interest. The first is 'Why study languages?' and the second is 'Studying languages at university'. In 2012, 39% of language graduates got jobs in the UK, 10.1% went to work abroad, 19.7% stayed on in further study and 6.2% were working and studying. Of those, 15.2% went into retail, catering, waiting and bar staff, 15.3% into business and finance professions, 14.9% into marketing, sales and advertising professions and 14.5% into other clerical and secretarial occupations.

Two jobs where you really do need a language degree are interpreter and translator. Note that:

• it is difficult to find full time jobs in either of these
• opportunities are expected to increase as the European community grows
• promotion prospects are limited
• many of these jobs are freelance.

If you are going to work as an interpreter or translator, you need to be:

• confident to work alone, often under pressure
• accurate and quick-thinking
• objective and discreet – you may be dealing with confidential information.

It helps if you can interpret or translate more than one language. You normally need a degree in modern language(s). Degree courses are 4 years plus a year abroad, in a country where your chosen language is the main language. To get in you need 4 or 5 Highers. You do not always need to have a language Higher. As well as interpreter and translator, there is also a wide range of jobs using languages but where the language is not the main part of the job. You will find jobs where languages are useful in many other career areas, such as: Administration and Management; Buying, Selling and Related Work; Hospitality, Catering, Tourism and Cleaning; Teaching and Classroom Support and Transport and Distribution.

Sources

What do graduates do? (October 2013), HECSU/AGCAS in association with UCAS

Graduate jobs: Best languages to study, The Telegraph online, June 2013

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