Languages

BreakingBadLad

Hi all,
not sure if this is the right forum but i'd like to get some perspective from employers and workers alike. I'm thinking of studying a degree in French and Irish next year. I love languages, and I always have but I was just wondering what are the job/employment opportunities out there for language graduates?
Many thanks
bbl

Calina

BreakingBadLad wrote: »

Hi all,
not sure if this is the right forum but i'd like to get some perspective from employers and workers alike. I'm thinking of studying a degree in French and Irish next year. I love languages, and I always have but I was just wondering what are the job/employment opportunities out there for language graduates?
Many thanks
bbl

Depends. Languages can be a tool for other other things. Some of the key language jobs which are available will require some postgraduate qualifications.

Obvious options:

1) Language teaching
2) translation
3) interpreting

I know slightly more about 2 and 3 so I'll talk about those first.

For both interpreting and translation, the big employers are the EU institutions and the UN. French and Irish will open the EU for you but not the UN because of the working language differences. Irish, however, may open Irish government options to you. I am not sure how they recruit either translators or, indeed interpreters. It's likely that the NUIG interpreting course will have advice on the latter.

EU Translation: permanent : regular competitions, and for translation into Irish, there is a competition for permanent jobs this summer. If you check the EPSO website from around 9 June onwards, you will see the application documents and they will outline the process. Recruitment onto a reserve list takes about a year.

From time to time, they will also look for temporary agents, and those are usually advertised via the EPSO website also.

For the most part, you will need to have 2 passive European languages and be prepared to start learning additional ones afterwards.

EU Interpreting: you must have an interpreting qualification. In Ireland, I believe NUIG has the only accredited course. The EU institutions run annual freelance tests for different languages and most years, they run competitions for some languages. I have not seen a schedule for this year but you can see information regarding past years on the EPSO website again. For the purposes of Irish, Europarl tends to have a couple of interpreters whose mandate is to take any Irish and put it into something that the other 26 interpreters can interpret from, very often English. But again, you will need to be adding extra languages over time.

The preference is for three passive languages in practical terms, although initial requirements vary: for English active it can often be starting with 2.

The UN also hires translators and interpreters. I think for both they tend to require a relevant postgrad although I'm open to correction on translation. You will need to have at least two official UN languages as passive languages, plus a UN as active language. Assuming you are a native English speaker, you only have French as a passive UN official language. Of the other three, Spanish is probably the quickest win and it's handy for the EU as well. Your mileage may vary on that.

The thing about recruitment at the moment is that a lot of employers don't really value pure language degrees. They tend to want some sort of a clearly defined skill thing as well such as computer programming or marketing. So it's hard to say who hires language graduates for the pure fact of being a language graduate. This is not to undervalue language graduates - it's generally a broad degree which features a lot of soft skills plus some high level analysis skills. But you need to sell yourself and those skills into particular jobs and demonstrate some lateral thinking. I'd also suggest that you need to be willing to travel and add to the language degree as well.

Software localisation related skills are an option. Currently, for example, Amazon are hiring a bunch of translators for Luxembourg. Bundesbank has hired translators into English lately. So has the European Central Bank. Teaching is an option (but you'll need a HDip to go in the school system), the diplomatic service is an option (Public Appointments Service run a competition from time to time), civil service occasionally has special lists for Irish speakers for the purpose of guaranteeing service through both Irish and English. Adding some sort of a law qualification opens lawyer linguist jobs in the EU. International aid programs are another possible option for you. In a lot of these cases, however, you will not necessarily be using Irish although my experience is any knowledge of Irish at all makes learning some other languages a little easier.

Another thing which you should bear in mind - if you go down this road - is that both the UN and the EU run internship programs, both in general terms and for translation specific roles and that it is worth investigating those before you graduate.

I suppose what I am saying is that you can quite a bit with a language degree but expect to get a bolt on qualification as well.

The_Conductor

Another option is call-centre type roles.......
I spent a few (unhappy) years in that industry- because I had reasonable German and Spanish........

reallyrose

I've hired for people in marketing type roles + a language as well as the localisation/translation roles mentioned above.
Call centre support roles are an option but you need to be 100% fluent. From experience, English language natives who studied a language in college rarely pass the language test.

If I was to pick a language that every other employer is screaming for right now, I'd pick German. May not be the same in 4 years though!




..can never find German speakers.... :mad:

ED E

I'd strongly consider the long term value of a language degree at this point. Your bachelors will be a center point of your CV for the next 40yrs but with the advancement in automated translation and the expansion of English (schools everywhere except Ireland & UK find it the most popular 2nd language) its not hard to imagine the job market shrinking to almost nothing. I'm disastrous at learning languages myself but if I weren't I'd only consider it as a tertiary skill not a vocation.

The direct opportunities are limited.

With Irish I would guess in public sector jobs it would be an advantage.

I have a business with French degree and your language will never be as good as a native. The native speaker might also have additional languages or skills.

I have worked in France but I was sent there because of my technical accounting skills - not because I spoke French.

Having said that I enjoyed studying languages and the time I spent on Erasmus was great.

The_Conductor

Deleted User wrote: »

With Irish I would guess in public sector jobs it would be an advantage.

Don't bet on it.......
Look at the AO thread in this forum- no-one has been interviewed for AO with Irish- as in- not a single person- despite it being a defined stream in its own right.........
Traditionally it might have been useful in the civil service (rather than Public Sector)- however, those days are in the past.

Having reasonable Irish is more a gateway towards learning other Latin based languages- than a skill in its own right any longer.........

Solomon Pleasant

[Deleted User] wrote: »

The direct opportunities are limited.

With Irish I would guess in public sector jobs it would be an advantage.

I have a business with French degree and your language will never be as good as a native. The native speaker might also have additional languages or skills.

I have worked in France but I was sent there because of my technical accounting skills - not because I spoke French.

Having said that I enjoyed studying languages and the time I spent on Erasmus was great.

I'm a business and German student in college and was wondering if you thought the language was worth the effort. I enjoy German but it's probably the reward of better job opportunities and higher pay that convinced me to choose the course. Would I be have been better to do accountancy/ pure business / commerce or something? Interested in your opinions as you're a graduate with the essentially the same degree as me ( bar the language difference obviously). Thanks.

Studying the language does not exclude you from any of those options generally. If anything it might put you ahead of general business candidates depending on the job you apply for. But the language itself probably won't be the deciding factor - your experience of studying abroad will probably be more interesting.

Taking accountanct as an example - a trainee auditor isn't going to be sent to Frankfurt as a first assignment - but it will give you examples to draw on in an interview that the next candidate might not have.

I enjoyed the practical study of the language and doing translations etc. I had no interest in studying Molière. The occasional overlap with the Arts language students confirmed that.

Solomon Pleasant

Have you found it beneficial in your career to have a foreign language? From reading your previous posts I'm guessing you work as an accountant now or are involved in some area of financial analysis. Did you have to do a postgrad/master etc in accountancy to attain this job or did you simply specialise in your final 2 years of your undergraduate degree? Would you advise myself to enter this field or would it better to go into a different area like marketing? Thanks for any feedback and advice you have.