What does one do with a DEGREE in Chinese? As opposed to not getting a degree in Chinese but spending 4 years learning it while getting a degree in, I dunno, materials science or something.
3. Dual degree with any number of degrees (e.g., business, art, etc.) that have natural pairings due to demands in the labor market (although not sure how much demand in West Virginia specifically).
On a more real but anecdotal note, I know many language majors who have moved to the/a target language country for a year or more after graduation, and they learned more about what types of bilingual jobs were available. That led them to either get a job in one of those areas or skill up in some way (typically going back to school) to get the skills and/or credentials they needed to get the job they wanted.
On a personal note, even though I wasn’t a Japanese major, I went to Japan after college to learn Japanese better. My idea was to learn Japanese and become an “international lawyer” with a focus on Japan.
I met a few folks who did that exact job in Japan, and most of them were miserable. Needless to say, I changed the direction of my career.
> What was the source or cause of their misery, and how sure were you that the correlation wasn't spurious?
Great question!
In their words, the legal work wasn’t that interesting, the business side (rain making) could be infuriating due to cultural differences, working in Japan wasn’t that interesting after the honeymoon period, and living in Japan wasn’t something they wanted to do long term with their family.
I will add that some ambitious folks who worked in firms that had locations back in the US kind of felt like second class citizens in their own firms, even though they were driving quite a bit of revenue at the time.
Having worked in Japan myself (since I spoke with them), I can add some things that they probably thought but didn’t say:
1. Trying to explain American anything to someone who thinks that the Japanese way is the best way and should be the only way around the world gets old after a while. These folks existed in Japan in droves at that time (90s). It’s better now, but they still exist. Note that this knife cuts both ways — trying to explain Japanese ways to Americans who think the American way is the best and only way gets old as well. I’ve done both. If you want to get technical, it usually boils down to the “international” person being at a higher stage of adult cognitive development than the local (see Robert Kegan for an example of what these levels look like). Given that some US legal concepts seem counterintuitive or even unfair even to Americans, you can imagine how added layers of a different culture and a different legal system might meet some resistance from Japanese clients.
2. Raising a family in Japan, even in Tokyo, can present challenging issues. Even if everything is covered in terms of cost (housing, schooling, travel, etc.), there is still the issue of the constantly rotating cast of characters of your co-workers, friends, classmates (for kids), etc. Also, some spouses get very antsy and/or dissatisfied for a variety of reasons. If costs are not covered, it takes a lot of money or a lot of compromise to make things work.
3. I’m fairly certain that one or more of the folks I spoke with actually didn’t speak much Japanese — they were top notch legal practitioners who had interpreters do whatever speaking needed to be done. While one could live in Tokyo fairly well without speaking a word of Japanese, it would be a very shallow experience, imho.
There are a lot of things I could say about the legal profession in general. They aren’t related to Japan at all, but they may have contributed to the misery these folks were experiencing.
While certain areas of law fascinate me (Berkman Center stuff can be quite interesting), I’m glad I didn’t become a lawyer in general, and a lawyer in Japan in particular.
> Is there any hope of becoming proficient enough at chinese to compete for these jobs when you're just starting in your late teens?
Yes… sort of.
First, folks who have learned the language as adults are often better at teaching early stages of language learning. Bilingual folks may know what is right or sounds right, but they may not know why.
Second, folks who are bilingual mostly by speaking the language in their home often have a very limited scope of knowledge of the language. The range of language needed to teach at a university or to a higher level of proficiency (beyond tourist level) requires a much wider range of target language knowledge.
Third, for folks who want to become a professor, their research will matter much more than their ability to teach the nuts and bolts of the language.
Lastly, at most universities that teach Chinese, you have mostly if not exclusively grad students from China teaching the pure language stuff. Someone who has a major in Chinese will be teaching literature, linguistics, culture, or something similar.
Bilingual could allow you to work in some capacity. But in teaching those people really don't always know why. Why is something correct or why is something wrong. What is probably a good learning path. Just think of average native speaker. They can tell that something is wrong, but they can't always explaining in common framework why is it wrong.
And then if you get money involved, you probably want version in both languages or even more. And those have to be correct exactly.
Yes. I have lived in China for about five years, and while I myself am not yet fluent, I have met several foreigners who started learning Chinese in their twenties and who are completely fluent and can speak like native speakers. I have almost met Chinese people who have never lived abroad, started learning English in their teens, and who speak English as fluently as a native. I think it's all about the immersion and the willingness to keep up with it.
If you're not fluent in Chinese, how could you tell if someone speaks Chinese like a native?
I'm only a native speaker of English, but I know vast swathes of native Chinese speakers who have been in the US for decades and sound nothing like native English speakers. I know ones that do sound like native speakers too, but it's rare in my experience.
I don't think immersion is anywhere close to sufficient to guarantee native-like proficiency, there's something else.
Because I have been with them in group settings, and although I am not fluent I understand a lot. They can speak at native speed and are never confused about what is being said. Basically that's it.
Have you lived abroad? Living in China has dispelled a lot of my previous notions about what is possible when it comes to language. Another person I knew moved to China after college, taught English, and ended up staying her for forty years. My Chinese friend told me that when she speaks to him she forgets he is a foreigner. It happens.
If a native Chinese speaker said that person speaks like a native, then I believe them. However I don't believe it's possible for a non fluent speaker to make that determination.
I think we're on the same page with regards to whether a non native speaker can reach native levels. It can happen with a lot of work. But time and immersion alone doesn't do it, I've already said I've seen cases where that didn't work and some where it did.
> Is there any hope of becoming proficient enough at chinese to compete for these jobs when you're just starting in your late teens?
Yes.
(Classroom teaching/formal teaching is not gonna matter much -- consuming lots of Chinese content at just the right level will be much more effective.)
> I feel like one would never stand a chance against someone who was raised in a bilingual house.
Actually, you might. A lot of them are not raised with Mandarin -- or if they are, a heavily accented form of Mandarin. You can go straight to Mandarin.
You might also have another advantage. If you put in the work, you will learn how to read and write. A lot of the bilingual types raised outside of China have not put in the hours and are basically illiterate in Chinese.
And finally, your ability to communicate in Chinese -- or any foreign language -- is not just a question of fluency or having as little accent as possible. It is very much a matter of how you choose to express yourself. IQ matters a lot here. Donald Tusk (former PM of Poland, former President of the European Council) is a great As an example of someone who was able to express himself very well, despite a poor grasp of English.
There can be big benefits to being white in Asia for these kinds of jobs. They want to employ a foreign/"exotic" businessman to give them credibility. If you were raised bilingual, odds are you're Chinese and just fit in there.
MTL with some editing is probably enough even without gpt for the lowest end.
Then you can get some hobbyist or Chinese person for next tier.
But you will probably always want professional for legal and contractual work, translating international treaties and interpretation at high level. We might get somewhere close, but I think for situations like UN you will always want live person at least some of the time.
In theory it makes perfect sense to cut the degree programs and keep (perhaps smaller or at least lower overhead) departments as pure service depts.
The problem is that, in practice, tiny majors use of very few resources for non-service courses. As a result, the savings from cutting the major are much lower than expected and realizing those savings requires gutting the departments service capacity as well.
Plus you lose all your half decent faculty — and especially the ones who aren’t already senile and/or retired in place.
Usually, if you really do need the service courses, it is better to keep the major but adjust compensation and resource allocation for under-subscribed upper division courses. See math departments as a case study.
Presumably the people coming through these programs are a drop in the ocean next to number of Americans fluent in Chinese and Spanish, and likely able to teach it at quite a high level without a specific degree for that language.
