> >liability in the job market and for long-term
> career
> >development, nothing will change.
>
> It is certainly not a liability in the Indian job
> market, especially
> the flourishing outsourcing industry. Knowing a few
> European/Asian
> languages is a swift ticket "up the value chain", as
> the beloved phrase goes.
Can you confirm that this is happening from your
experience? The last company I worked for fired every
single person with foreign languages since they were
"too expensive". None of them (except me, who had
other fish to fry) still lives in England anymore. I
ended up getting fired because when I started making
suggestions as to their I18n efforts (and the Senior
software guy loved it), I was "overstepping my
boundaries". This occurred in a number of companies I
was working for.
I do not believe that the larger Western countries
regard foreign languages as an asset. They pay lip
service to it, but I would like to see a single
English, American or German employee and was a) hired
on the strength of a degree and competence in, say,
Russian, Hindi, Chinese or Japanese, even if they were
competent in bread and butter fields like CS,
accountancy, economics and b) if hired, retained as
valuable members of staff in a budget crunch.
I used to know a huge number of people with half a
dozen languages who had excellent qualifications who
ended up making a living as administrators or
secretaries.
I would like to believe that this is different in
India. Languages used to be a major asset with
Japanese MNCs in the 1980s. Not sure whether this is
still the case.
But in Europe...forget it.
-Frank
>
> Udhay
>
> --
> ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com))
> ((www.digeratus.com))
>
>
>
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