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Hello everyone, and welcome to the LangFocus Channel.
Today I'm going to talk about a question that I've been getting quite a lot recently,
and that is "What kind of job can I do with my foreign language skills?"
or "What kind of job should I do if I'm interested in foreign languages?"
Now, this is a question that I respect because I've witnessed a lot of people
investing years of their life into studying a language, kind of with the
assumption that it would naturally improve their career or give them new
opportunities, but without having a plan for how they would use that language,
they didn't really benefit from it and ended up being quite frustrated.
So young people who are asking this question
early on, I think you are thinking about things the right way. But the answer to
this question depends on just how you imagine your life in the future and how
far you really want to go with your language study. Now, some jobs are
specifically language-related; other jobs are not specifically-language related,
but a foreign language could be an asset; and for other jobs, it's not really
necessary at all, but it might be useful for your overall lifestyle. I'm going to
talk about those three types of situations. So first up are jobs that are
specifically language-related. For these jobs, you need to have some expertise in
the language; you need to have a deep understanding of the language.
So, the first kind of job is to teach a language. Here in Japan, I know a lot of
people who teach English; I also know people who teach other languages, like
French or Spanish.
Now, even if you don't have a lot of qualifications, there are some
opportunities to teach your language, especially if it's a major global
language, and especially if it's English. But the more qualifications you have,
then, of course, the better opportunities you get and the higher pay you can get,
the better positions you can find. Now, if you want to study a foreign language
that's not your native language and then teach that language, then you're looking
at a situation where you really need to get some expertise; you really need to
get qualifications. You should get a master's degree or maybe a PhD or
qualifications that show that you know that language very well at an academic
level, at a deep level, not just a conversational level. That's if you're
going to teach a language that's not your native language. Now, another type of
job that is language-specific is becoming a translator or an interpreter. Now,
the difference between those, just to clarify, a translator is somebody who
translates texts; they translate written materials from one language to another;
but an interpreter is somebody who translates speech; they translate the
things people are saying live, in real time, as they are speaking. Now, being a
translator or interpreter requires you to have a very deep understanding of
that language, because there's really no room for error or misunderstanding. You
have to translate, sometimes, very important information, and mistakes could
be a big problem, so you need to have very good, almost native-level skills,
especially if you're interpreting in real time, but also, you need to learn the skills of
translation or interpreting. Those are separate skills that you need to learn
on top of knowing the language. So, for these jobs that are specifically
language-related, there's really no room for language dabblers. You really need
to have a comprehensive understanding of that language, and you have to be able to
show that you can use that language at almost a native level. Next up are jobs
that are not specifically language related; they are basically focused on
another skill that you need, but the language is an additional asset.
The first kind of job is one that requires some technical expertise, but having a
language on top of that will give you some extra opportunities; so an example
that I've heard is from an engineer. His company sells some sort of machines to
companies around the world, and they send this engineer to those companies so he
can teach people how to use those machines in their factories. So, he learns
foreign languages so that he can do that. I believe this guy in particular
was working in Indonesia, so he learned Indonesian to be able to teach those
people in their native language. Another example career is business with a
regional focus; for example, maybe you get a commerce degree, or you get a Masters
of Business Administration, an MBA, but also you have some language skills, and maybe
you work for a company that does business in that region or does business
with companies in that region. Another example career is the foreign service --
being a diplomat, being someone who works at your country's embassies abroad. When
you work in the foreign service, I think that often involves some kind of
language training before you are sent abroad, but knowing some languages in
advance before you apply is probably a big asset. Another example is being a
tour guide. Now, a tour guide's main focus is not the language; it's the history and it's the
anthropology and all of those sorts of things, but having in language that they
can explain things in, that will help them have other opportunities, so maybe
you might specialize in tourists from Japan. You learn Japanese; you can be a
tour guide for Japanese tourists. Depending on where you live,
another option might be to do some other job in the tourism industry or open a
business in the tourism industry. If you live on Bali Island in Indonesia, then you
would be crazy not to learn English and Japanese and maybe some other languages
that are common amongst tourists. Another career is being a cabin attendant. Now, their
main focus is on safety training, on emergency response and that kind of
thing, but knowing a language, that's an additional asset; probably, they need to
know English in most cases, but they also need to know the language of the country
they're working in or of the destination that they often fly to. Maybe
they don't need to know it fluently, but knowing some of that language will help
them deal with the passengers on the plane; so if you live in Los Angeles and
you often fly to Asia, then knowing Japanese or Korean or Mandarin or
another language like that would probably be a big asset. Now all of these
jobs I just talked about, they're focused on another important skill, so they're
not focused on language, so you don't need a specific language qualification
in most cases, but you need to be able to demonstrate that you can use that
language on the job. that's the most important thing. The third type of job I
want to mention is one that doesn't really have any language requirement, but
learning that language would be useful for your off-time and for your overall
lifestyle. So let's say that you live in Singapore, and your company does business
in English, then you don't have to learn any other language; people in Singapore
speak English, but nearby is Malaysia and Indonesia; so let's say you want to
travel there on your off time. learning Malay or learning Indonesian would be very
useful in that situation, so think about the kind of lifestyle that you want to
have, and think about how languages fit in with that. Let's say that you want to
live the corporate expat lifestyle in some place like Hong Kong. Then, you can
study Cantonese while you get your finance degree, or you get your MBA or
whatever. If you want to be a programmer, and you can program from your laptop
anywhere in the world, then think about what country you would like to live in, and
learn the language of that country. If you're an avid traveler, and you love the
idea of living in different countries all the time, then you can learn how to
do businesses on the Internet, and you can learn the language of whatever
countries that you want to spend an extended period of time in. Or if you want
to learn a foreign language, and you want to someday reach an expert level and be
able to teach that language, then plan ahead for that; maybe go for your master's
degree or PhD. Try to really get a deep understanding and overall knowledge of
that language. So these are just my thoughts on it, based on things that I
know and things that I've heard, but a lot of the viewers have different
perspectives. Some of you probably have jobs that involve foreign languages, so
we want to know what you think. If you have any other ideas or any questions
about this topic,
leave them down below. Thank you for watching, and have a nice day.