Jobs for the Major

Jobs for the Major

How this major affects a job search

Unlike many liberal arts majors, you have a ready-made career waiting for you. It's not your only option, though. Not by a long shot. As it turns out, people with extensive education in foreign languages are pretty valuable almost anywhere. This whole globalization thing means that even companies that aren't directly related to your major might be interested.

This also depends on what language or languages you learned in your studies. Really, you should do as many as you feel like you can retain. That way, you're going to maximize your employment opportunities down the road. They also say that one language makes it easier to learn the next. We think C-3P0 said that originally.

The careers we're going to list are the ones that veer more toward the standard for the major. Just be aware that if you know a language that's in demand, you're in demand. In other words, don't learn Klingon. We're years from contacting them anyway.

Common Career Fields

School Counselor. While not a technically a teaching position, counselors can really benefit from this degree. After all, not all of your students are going to be native English speakers, and not all of them are necessarily going to be from the same culture. You're not going to reach anyone that you can't connect with on a linguistic or cultural level. Well, not until we get Star Trek Universal Translators. Someone should get on that.

Education. Be a teacher. You have the training, you have the learning, and you have the talent. Really, this is the easiest fit of all the potential jobs you could have. Just walk in and show them the degree. Then the confetti and parades happen. We assume.

Interpreter. You've trained in languages your entire academic career. Even better, with your cultural knowledge, you have a command of the one thing a lot of interpreters struggle to master: idiom. Imagine if you were trying to interpret English and someone said, "Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth." You'd think you were talking to a crazy person. In fairness, you might be, but that's just an idiom.

Journalism. That's right, you can leave the strict world of academia and interpretation behind. You're really just learning to apply your skills in a new way. Your language skills can either be utilized by working in a different language than your own, or else for interviewing people from different backgrounds. Your knowledge of culture will also help with investigation and stories. You will become an anthropological ghost, moving from story to story with speed and skill.

Special Education Teacher. Not all special education students speak English. Someone with your training would be vital to helping these kids out. When you think of people that could use a leg up, it would be these kids. It's a specific vocation, but it's also one that will be making a huge difference in someone's life.

Corporate Trainer. Trainers are people brought in to teach specific skills to employees. Hey, you can teach specific skills. It's like these things are a perfect match. You're going with the same challenges, using the same skills, but this time your students are adults. That sounds pretty good.

Translator. The difference between translation and interpretation is that the latter is verbal. Translation is all about writing. The skill is to get it as close to the writer's intent as possible. This means you have to understand where the writer is coming from as thoroughly as you can. The culture the writer comes from, the specific word choices, and so on. If you run into a language that has sixty words for "gun" and one of them is the same as "child," you better get that translation correct, or you are making a dangerous error.

Current unemployment of the major

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Percentage of majors who get a higher degree after college

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Stats obtained from this source.