About Academia de Espanol

Posted online: Monday December 29, 2003 Mumbai

Proficiency in a foreign language increases job options and broadens your horizons, says Uma Keni Prabhu.

WHEN Marfik Kamat left theatre to learn Japanese, her only interest then, was to learn" a new language, new culture and a different way of life." Her passion soon blossomed into a full time and a rewarding career. Today Kamat has her own Academy of Japanese Language and Culture, trains about 400 students annually and makes a decent pay packet. 'Knowledge of foreign languages and cultures is not a hobby any more. It is an increasingly essential skill in many career fields," she says confidently.

That a language is now learnt less as a hobby and more as a skill to be used for career advancement is quite evident. Consider these facts: Global business is increasingly becoming the rule. Sophisticated communications technology is fast breaking down barriers between countries and uniting different cultures. Studying a foreign language either as a primary or a supplementary job skill may therefore be the key to carving out a good career or getting that much awaited promotion. "Knowing a second language is a major asset to people looking for jobs," observes Patrick DEYVANT, director, Alliance Francaise de Bombay (AFB).

Advertisements that appear in various newspapers indicate this trend distinctly: Business Process Outsourcing companies ask for executives "who are fluent in European languages? Export Promotion Councils want "consultants to provide foreign language related services" Multinationals hunt for experienced web developers, web designers, and web market researchers skilled in foreign languages, and publishing houses look for content writers and editors for delivering quick, competitive and quality translations

The pattern is obvious. The study of languages is an exciting and mind expanding career option. "In today's global market, the career opportunities for students who have acquired skills in one or more foreign languages are virtually limitless/'remarks Nandini Kotwal, teacher, Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai (MMB). Naturally, many between 16 and 60 years of age and above are quick to respond to this new reality, albeit for different reasons. At AFB prospective Canadian immigrants form a large chunk of students. "They do French to be able to answer the Test d' Evaluation (TEF)," Abirami lyer, librarian, explains. The Canadian consulate follows a certain point system to issue visas for immigrants, and the knowledge of French helps. According to AFB's education counselor Niloufer Solar, people also learn French to be able to study in France. France has turned into a popular destination for quality education and offers highly specialized courses like an MBA in wine making and aerospace.

The reason for the mad rush at the MMB is almost identical. About 30 percent students learn German because they want to study engineering, research, medicine in Germany, where education is absolutely free and state of the art. Approximately 10 per cent wish to do hotel management in Austria, 20 percent work for German companies like Lufthansa, Siemens, Deutch Bank and need to be prepared to live in Germany, and 30 percent of the students are IT professional working on various German projects. IT is still computer geeks' passport to greener pastures on the other side of the globe. They can straight away get a work permit of up to five years in Germany and the knowledge of German in an asset. Even the Japan Foundation has announced La financial assistance for IT professionals, who want to study Japanese. Only about 10 per cent learn a language as a hobby, and may get into teaching, translation and/or interpretation as freelancers or full timers.

It takes about five years and an investment of about Rs 50,000 to master a foreign language. One can either opt for a three-year or a five-year integrated graduate course after the 12th standard or take courses offered by cultural centers attached to embassies. These are basic as well as advanced courses and there are no pre-requisites. "But how much time, effort and money one wants to invest depends upon the individual," says Leela Lall, former director, the British Institute of Languages. "A good memory, discipline, concentration, and consistent work habits help."

"In addition, a fairly good command over one's own mother tongue, ease or ken expression, absence of stage shyness or speech defects, good public relations, a good deal of curiosity and awareness of public life, habit of travelling are desirable emphasises Y.C Devadhar, a Latin languages expert.

The demand for language expertise is in different areas like media and publishing, banking and finance, travel and tourism, technical and engineering, information technology, hospitality business, voluntary social organisations. Kotwal talks of several publishing houses in Chennai which have tie ups with renowned German publishing houses and translate volumes of dictionaries and encyclopedias from German to English. They hire students who translate and send the written material online to Germany. Experts there evaluate and send it back for printing. These student work for five hours a day and make up to Rs.15, 000/- a month.

DEYVANT recollects how an American company that had plans to start about 40 call centers in India had AFB for French-speaking students. In another instance a multinational wanted translators for their websites."They pay up to Rs 60,000 for this kind of job. For people here this is big money, and for the multinationals getting the job done here is almost three times cheaper than elsewhere." Guided excursion tours to museums, shopping malls, etc. require personnel with language skills. Even ITDC and MTDC today prefer tourist guides with foreign language skills and pay them well. Recently, ITDC paid about Rs 900 per day to tourist guides with Japanese skills, who had accompanied a Japanese delegation to the historical Ajantha and Ellora caves. Since many German tourists come to Rajas than and Goa by chartered flights, MMB has started a special course called Tourist Guide German.

United Nations is the largest employer of translators, editors, and interpreters. It also employs professional economists, educationalist, financial analysts, public information officers, librarians, and continuously needs bilingual clerical and secretarial staff. The demand for language expertise is high even in the NGO sector. Dinesh Govindani, Spanish teacher with the Study Centre of Foreign Languages narrates the case of a NGO from Spain that that undertaken developmental work in Gujarat to rehabilitate earthquake victims. "They hired interpreters at Rs. 2, 500 for eight hours," says Govindani. Archana Bansal of Surabhi Foundation for Research and Cultural Exchange agrees. "We keep needing services of interpreters for our exchange programmes."

Interpreters and translators play a great role in international communication. Interpreting deals with oral communication, and translation with written materials. Professional translators and interpreters find jobs with governments, international agencies, conferences, publishers and the business world. Interpreters must make quick and continuous judgments about what is being said in the foreign or 'source' language, and render it simultaneously or consecutively into the 'target' language. There is little or no time to weigh alternatives. Simultaneous Interpretation is given idea-by-idea, or phrase-by-phrase, as the speaker continues to talk. This technique requires speed and fluency, and is made possible by the use of electronic equipment. This is considered to be more difficult. In Consecutive Interpretation the speaker and interpreter take turns speaking. A consecutive interpreter must have a good memory, and generally needs to take notes of what is said to be certain to give a complete rendering. Conference Interpreters serve at international meetings, seminars and discussions. The main languages used at such conferences are English, French, German, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Escort Interpreters accompany visiting delegations or individuals and interpret for them, generally in informal situations. These are in great demand in the area of international business, as they often accompany businessmen traveling abroad for negotiations. An Interpreter gets anything between Rs 2,500 to Rs 3,000 per 8 hours, depending upon his level of understanding of the language and the subject he/ she is dealing with. Translators produce clear, accurate, and lucid account of everything from literary works to highly complicated technical reports. They should not only possess a thorough knowledge of the source language, but also the ability to grasp difficult ideas and concepts. There are 'specialist translators; who have expertise in finance, literature, history, patents, and engineering. Experts charge Rs three per word for 'source' language to English translations and almost three times that amount if it is the other way round. Of the three categories - general, technical/ commercial and legal- the latter is the most difficult and most expensive. The charges are approximately Rs seven per word. According to Govindani Spanish to English translation fetches one Rs. 200 per page if the number of pages is more than 10. "If you are good you can get to translate up to 100 pages a month."

Teaching however is most preferred and for obvious reasons. At MMB full time teachers get about Rs 40,000 a month and temporarily ones work for five hours a day and make up to Rs 25,000. Private coaching fetches you up to Rs 500 per hour and you have to teach for 160 hours. "Teaching is flexi time and even housewives can do it, says Govindani.

Here's a list of foreign language institutes:

School of Languages, Jawahalal Nehru University, New Delhi
Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages (CIEFL), Hyderabad
Benares Hindu University, Varnasi
University of Delhi
Alliance Francaise de Bombay -2035993/2036187
Max Muller Bhavan - 2027542/2022085
Indo Japanese Association - 287 3027/ 84 4772
Academia de Español - 26788930
Italian Consulate - 3804071/3804073
Cultural Centre of Russia - 495 2495
British Institute -287 0755/2870756
Studies Centre of Foreign Languages (SCOFL) -6114098/6172562
Academy of Japanese Language and Culture 022-26844820 / 26820786
Indo Italian Chamber of Commerce

Did you know that

The largest market and economic bloc in the world today is the European Union - the two major economic powerhouse nations within the EU and France and Germany. One of the EU nations with a rapidly growing economy is Spain.

Japan is today a world leader in many business and investment areas.

For most scientists, a reading knowledge of German is essential. Government agencies and businesses the world over that deal with Hispanic immigrants, are looking for personnel, ranging from lawyers to health professionals, who speak Spanish.

France has the second greatest aeronautical industry in the world and is a leader in computer technology, telecommunications, and medical research. (Source: Internet)

Spanish is the second world language as a vehicle of international communication and the third as an international language of politics, economics and culture. About 330 million people in the world speak Spanish as their first language and another 100 million people speak this as a second language.

Spanish is expected to be the first language of 50 percent of the population of the United States within the next 50 years. Today Spanish is an official language of the UN and its institutions, the European Union and other international organizations. Latin American countries are experiencing constant economic growth and because of that, are becoming more important as trading partners.

A large number of Latin American countries are on the verge of signing the North American (NAFTA), created by the United States, Canada and Mexico. (Source: Instituto Cervantes)

Posted online: Monday August 5, 2002 Mumbai by Nina Martyris

Talk of felicity of tongue-Mumbai is jack of all
Indians, they say, have a natural affinity for language. For a nation of talkers, this gift of tongues is a bare necessity, although the rest of the world has been known to say that we Indians talk less with our tongues and more with our heads and hands. A natural consequence perhaps, of living hi a subcontinent that makes the Tower of Babel sound like a unilingual utopia.

Multilingual Mumbai, microcosm of India, has twisted many tongues well and truly out of shape to forge its own robust streetspeak. Salman Rushdie in The Ground Beneath Her Feet captured the essence of this word jigsaw when he described it as "Bombay's garbage argot, Mumbai ki kachrapati baat-cheet, in which a sentence could begin in one language, swoop through a second and even a third and then swing back round to the first. Our acronymic name for it was Hug-me. Hindi Urdu Gujarati Marathi English. Bombayites like me were people who spoke five languages badly and no language well."

This Jack-of-all-tongues felicity is perhaps best demonstrated by the tenacious battalions of beggar children who operate at the Gateway of India. The Gateway seafront drips tourists of every accent and hue spilling out from the magnificence of the Taj and the less opulent hotels that line the Colaba Causeway. The beggar squads have learnt to beg with an 'aw shucks' American twang, sing snatches of French songs, grovel in Arabic and beat their breasts in Italian. A beggar's opera of sorts if you will, but it does ensure a decent daily revenue.

It would be a linguistic injustice, however, to discount this city as some paradise of pigdin, when in fact it is a centre where the study of language, and foreign languages in particular, has a dedicated following. Given that Mumbai exports droves of students, doctors, IT professionals, nurses and newly weds to foreign shores every year, there is a growing demand for foreign-language courses.

Learning French at the Alliance Francaise and German at the Max Mueller Bhavan are now par for the course for every other callow student who wants to add international value to an otherwise tepid resume. What comes as something of a surprise is that Spanish, that language of passion and rhythm has emerged as a front-runner, and no, it has nothing to do with Ricky Martin's obvious charms.

Spanish teacher Dinesh Govindani, who grew up in the Canary Islands, doesn't find this surprising in the least. "Spanish is the second language of the world," he says, "The advantage of learning Spanish is that with it you learn 60 per cent Italian, 60 per cent French and some Portuguese too." Spanish owes its popularity to the batches of US-bound students, eager to master the language that is used most commonly after English. "Since Indians look like Latin Americans, everyone addresses us in Spanish," says Mr Govindani. "And students who want to work in chains like Burger King and McDonald's heed to have a working knowledge of Spanish."

At the British Institute at Fountain and the Study Centre of "Foreign Languages at Mithibai College at Vile Parle, batches of learners swot away at Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, French and German. Chinese is in demand too, but no one has been able to source a teacher yet.

"Japanese is said to be the number one toughest language in the world," says teacher Manisha Shanghvi, "but with the software boom, the demand has gone up. In Mumbai, it's mostly diamond merchants and software engineers who want to learn Japanese."

It is interesting to see how world events and global trade in particular have an impact on the demand for foreign langauges... Geetanjali Gopalan, who runs the Study Centre of Foreign Languages and Leilla Lall, director of British Institutes have watched the ebb and flow.

Before September 11, when IT companies were even ready to recruit on the phone, the English language classes were full of techies firming up their faltering English. When the Gulf boom was on; Arabic held sway with newly wetis learning the language before joining their husbands overseas; now it's mostly young girls who want to read the Koran in the original, Dutch packages are still very popular with the Sindhis who have diamond houses in Amsterdam; The Korean car boom caused a run on English-Korean language packages with company officials trying to decipher cutting-edge automobile technology in Korean; when we buying our defense equipment from Sweden, army personnel were trained in Swedish.

There are some learners who are there for the love of language ? Rajdeep Singh has done three years of Spanish, four years of French and is now in his second year of German. Ten-year-old Saurabh Kulkarn meanwhile, is probably the youngest Japanese student in the City. Others, like the IT executives on their way to Japan, are there for survival.

Posted online: Monday June 26, 2000 Mumbai

THE LAND OF FLAMENCO BECKONS
Wouldn't you like to sing along with Rlcky Martin rather than just sway to the beats of Maria? And be able to make sense of Enrique's Bailamos le quiero mi amigo? Or then not look dumbfounded the next time your girlfriend tells you 'hasta ... vista.' Well, the only solution to this is a lesson or two in Spanish. Learning the lingo has many advantages. It will not just make you familiar with the language but also give you an insight into the country's rich culture and customs.

After hearing the foot tapping Spanish music and being fascinated by the country's colourful dances, Preeti Khantu decided to learn the language, she says. "The language is so melodious that simply hearing and speaking it is music to the ears." With Spanish music invading every discotheque in town, learning the language becomes imperative if you want to hum along the lyrics.

Knowledge about the language equips you with not only vocabulary and grammar, but gives you a peek of the flamboyant Spanish culture. Language learning courses not only teach you how to conjugate the ar, er verbs, but familiarises you with the lifestyle, customs and traditions of the Spaniards. Dlya Patel, who has been learning Spanish since the past two years had no trouble mingling with the native people during her one month stay in the flamenco country. "I never once felt like a fish out of water while rubbing shoulders with the Spaniards, thanks to the exposure I got through books, magazines and cassettes on Spain, during my Spanish classes", she reminisces.

Besides the song, dance and cultural aspect of learning Spanish, the language has acquired an educational aspect too, especially for Indian students. Spanish is the second most popular spoken lingo in the US of A. Thus, Indian students who flock In herds to Liberty Land for higher education are at a advantage if they speak Spanish. This was the reason why Vikram Singh, who is on his way to Boston, took up a three month crash course In Spanish.

The most illuminating and bright facet of learning Spanish Is its commercial importance. The language is spoken not only in Spain and Mexico but also Republic Dominican Romania and of course, the Latin American countries like Chile and Argentina. With about half the world's population communicating in this sing-song lingo, most business transactions require Spanish speaking people. According to Dinesh Govindani, Spanish teacher at the Studies Centres of Foreign Languages (SCOFL). "There are immense opportunities for those learning Spanish because lately, the business ties between India -and South America are strengthening. The demand for Indians who are fluent in Spanish has increased threefold. Business houses are willing to shell out a large amount of green for those who can successfully negotiate and conduct their business activities in Spanish." Vijay Gadkari whose company has tremendous dealings with Latin American countries went back to the classroom days, so that he could pick up the language and improve his understanding of the business. And of course, it is cheaper to pay for lessons In Spanish than be duped by some good looking South American tycoon

Interpretation and translation offer an all time welcome for those with expert knowledge of Spanish. Translators earn between one to five rupees a word while interpreters are paid on an assignment or time basis.

Another upcoming domain which requires fluent Spanish is the movie making business. Nope, don't worry Bollywood's David Dhawan Is not planning to make an AMIGO NO 1 or VIDA SIDHA. But it wouldn't be such a bad idea though he could have Govinda and Karisma Kapoor doing the tango with Amrish Puri playing the pirated black eyed, villain. But this would definitely be over estimating Dhawan's capabilities. What Bollywood is actually doing is dubbing the Indian flicks In Spanish, so that they can be viewed internationally. The reason for the success of Indian films In Spain is due to the similarity in both countries' cultural and family values. So, all you eager Spanish learning students keep a watch, who knows when you might Just get picked up for dubbing Madhuri in Hum Apke Haln Kaun

With India's backwaters, deserts and beaches acquiring renown throughout the world, a huge number of foreign tourists are visiting our country. The destination of most Spanish speaking tourists is the land of snake charmers, elephants and tigers. Hemendra Pujari, a travel agent in Rajasthan has especially taken a year off to come to Mumbal and learn Spanish. According to him, "As the number of Spanish tourists visiting Rajasthan for all its palaces, beauty and splendour is rising, the demand for Spanish conversing guides is mounting. So, once I have learned this language, I can easily attract more tourists to my agency."

Angel Esteban del Campo, Professor of Spanish literature at the University of Granada after seeing the immense interest among Indians to learn his mother tongue is negotiating with the Spanish government to introduce advance levels of Spanish education and exams. Hopefully, we can expect more scholarships too.

So, the next time you catch Maria or Bailamos on any of the music channels, make sure you not only shake a leg but sing along too.

Here are some of the places that offer courses In Spanish:
- Studies Centre Of Foreign Languages (SCOFL): 6114098 / 6172562
- British Institution: 2870755 / 2870756
- Institute of Hotel Cargo and Tourism Management (IHCTM): 2853081/2070059