This blog is written with a purpose to bring general awareness amongst the Bodo students about the scope and opportunities offered by graduate or preferably postgraduate degrees in foreign languages. The author feels that Bodo students are under-represented in various Indian universities offering graduation and post-graduation in foreign languages.
Expertise in foreign languages is opening door to a wide range of career opportunities in Central government departments/ministries, Multi-National Companies (MNCs), foreign embassies, IT field, tourism, hospitality sector, education sector, etc in India and abroad. Grads, most preferably post grads are being offered good positions and salary in Central government departments like Ministry of External Affairs, Cabinet Secretariat and other departments. Similarly, foreign embassies based in India can also offer lucrative job opportunities ranging from as simple as receptionist to highly specialized jobs like Research analyst or market researchers (for such specialized jobs, however, you need additional professional courses like MBA, PG in international relation, etc). MNCs hire interpreters/translators to assist in their overseas businesses, IT companies hire linguists to assist in their multilingual software development and overseas business. Tourism or hospitality sector requires various kinds of language services and can offer a wide range of roles to the foreign language experts or what we call interpreters or linguists. As the world is increasingly getting globalized, and India becoming as one of the hubs for the global economic activities, studying foreign language can fetch you lucrative job opportunities.
A study by Adzuna, the search engine for job ads, revealed the following average annual income of the foreign language experts in India during December 2018 – Chinese: Rs 11.89 lakhs, French: Rs 9.83 lakhs, Spanish: Rs 9.8 lakhs, German: Rs 9.51 lakhs, Japanese: Rs 5.37 lakhs, Dutch: Rs 5.2 lakhs, Arabic: Rs 5.19 lakhs. For details you can read Adzuna’s full article at https://www.adzuna.in/blog/2019/01/24/what-is-the-highest-paid-foreign-language-in-india/
Top universities offering undergraduate, postgraduate and Doctoral courses in foreign languages are:
- Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, is one of the prestigious universities in India to study foreign languages and its degrees are acclaimed nationwide. JNU’s School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies offers undergraduate, post graduate and Doctoral (in some languages) courses in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portugese and Spanish.
- Delhi University (DU) offers graduate, post graduate and Doctoral degrees (in some) in Arabic, French, German, Italian Spanish, Japanese, Persi, Urdu, PG Intensive Advance Diploma in Chinese and Korean languages, and MA in East Asian Studies.
- English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad offers postgraduate courses in Arabic, French, German, Russian, and Spanish.
- Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi in UP, has MA programmes in foreign languages like German, French, Nepali, Urdu, Persian, Chinese, Russian and Arabic, besides offering undergraduate and postgraduate diploma in those languages.
- Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, boasts of MA/M Phil/PhD programmes in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. The university also provides MPhil/PhD programmes in European Studies/Latin American Studies, which contains Language proficiency courses. Diploma and Certificate programmes in languages like Chinese, French, Korean, Italian, Kazakhi, Pashto, Portugese, Russian, Spanish, Uzbek, Turkish, Turkemenian, besides the aforementioned languages are also being offered.
- Besides the universities mentioned above, there are several other universities offering undergraduate, postgraduate, diploma and certificate courses in foreign languages – Mumbai University, Pune Univeristy, Calcutta University, Gauhati University. Department of Foreign Languages under Pune University in Pune offers MA, MPhil and PhD courses in French, German, Russian, Spanish and Japanese. Mumbai University offers courses from undergraduate up to PhD in Russian; MA, diploma and certificate courses in Arabic; graduation, post graduation and PhD in German, French and Persian. Gauhati University, besides teaching Russian and French languages, offers Master’s degree in European Studies.
There are several other private institutes offering various programs in various foreign languages. However, students are advised to work hard to be able to enroll themselves in the top five universities of the country. Further, students’ choice of the language will make a huge difference. For example, considering the rise and influence of Chinese economy and tech companies on a global scale, choosing Chinese (Mandarin) over Pashto (spoken in some parts of Afganistan, Pakistan and Iran) has a better chance of giving you access to wider job opportunities with better package and better scope. Therefore, it would be prudent on students’ part to choose a language they would love to learn which at the same time offers good opportunities. To gauge the scope of a particular language in India or world, students can check out the amount of importance Government of India or the governments of different countries give to a particular country in terms of their foreign policy priorities, intergovernmental engagement, bi-lateral relation, trade & commerce and cultural exchanges. Further, the economic and technology power of a particular country can also determine the extent of opportunities for the experts of that particular language. Ultimately, however, it’s up to the students to decide for themselves which language to opt for because career consideration may not be the only reason for learning a foreign language. For students, who are too young to understand the diplomatic, political and economic nitty-gritty, we have given below the IMF 2018 list of top business languages by GDP (excluding English-1st position, Hindi – 8th and Bengali – 16th position for the purpose of this blog as they are not considered foreign language in India) and the number of countries where a particular language is recognized as official language: Chinese (Mandarin –19.64% share of the world GDP), Spanish (official language in 20 countries – GDP 6.04%), Arabic (official language in 25 countries – GDP 5.25%), Japanese (GDP 4.1%), French (official language in 29 countries – GDP 3.3%), German (official language in 6 countries – GDP 3.2%), Russian (GDP 3.1%), Portuguese (official language in 10 countries – GDP 2.7%). Besides, Indonesian, Korean, Italian, Polish, Turkish, Dutch, etc also occupy important positions as business languages in the world.
With the Government of India’s reoriented focus on Asia-Pacific region through its Act East Policy, expertise in other major languages of Indochina region like Vietnamese, Burmese, Filipino, etc can also open up sizeable opportunities for students in near future. The issue, however, is unavailability of Indian universities or colleges offering undergraduate and postgraduate courses in these languages. But there are some private institutes which are offering diploma or certificate courses in these languages.
Learning a foreign language not only gives you access to good career prospects, it also widens the horizon of your outlook, gives you unique experience, special insight into the culture, people, language, literature, country of your choice. With your newly discovered experience, heterogeneity, special insight attained through your knowledge of a foreign language, you can enrich the Bodo society, literature, culture, and even collective mindset. How many of us, the educated Bodos, have first-hand experience of the richness of French, German, Japanese, Arabic or Chinese cultures and literatures to be able to effectively transfer that richness to Bodo culture or literature?
