It seems that the EU is having difficulties with finding enough Native English speakers for interpretation and translation. Learn languages or lose out on a job | Business | The Observer The article concerns the UK, but I see this as a concern in the USA too.
| "Marco Benedetti, the EU’s director-general for interpretation, says that a generation of staff who joined when the UK became part of the EU are about to retire and that young people are not coming out of universities to replace them. ‘If we don’t do something very soon, there will be more and more non-native English speakers obliged to interpret into English,’ he said." |
This is a less than ideal situation, because for quality reasons it is not recommended or highly respected to use a non-native speaker when interpreting or translating documents.
I have always found this unsettling that the percentage of native English speakers that know more then one language is much lower than other languages. Yes, English has become the international business language for most of the world, but if you are operating internationally it greatly improves your chances of creating successful business relationships.
Why is it that we native English speakers are so inept at foreign languages? Speaking from a USA perspective… One of the major reasons is the late start that US students get when learning languages. Most places don’t start language programs until high school. So, 9th grade! Fortunately there is a trend to start sooner (7th grade), but it is not widely done. Most other countries start languages in 5th grade or even younger! Studies have shown that learning a language is far easier when you are younger than older.
The best time is when you are first learning to speak. A great example of this is a close friend of mine who is native German speaker and his wife is from the US and a native English speaker. She speaks very little German. When they had their first child my friend only spoke German with their daughter. The mother only English. At 2 years old, the father said something to his daughter in German. His wife was there too. So, the daughter turned to her mom and said, “Mom, did you understand what daddy just said.” Mom replied, “No honey I don’t didn’t.” So, the daughter translated it right there perfectly without a thought. This is great! And at only 2 years old! Unfortunately most of don’t have the luxury of having bilingual parents.
| "Modern foreign languages are increasingly seen as elitist, kept alive by the independent sector and selective grammar or specialist language colleges in the state sector, says Fiona Harris, the multilingual officer at the EU’s offices in London. ‘Already some meetings are being cancelled because they haven’t got interpreters,’ she says. ‘It’s not all doom and gloom because we are seeing an increased take-up of Mandarin and Arabic, but that doesn’t help us because we need people speaking English, French and German, the three procedural languages.’" |
It will be interesting to see what the Brits do to help this problem. Also, is anything being done in the USA?
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