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Careers & Languages

All professionals benefit from an ability to communicate in a second language, and many roles require it.

By John Worne, CEO, Chartered Institute of Linguists

Languages skills are professionally valuable. Whether you have a limited but functional ability to communicate in another language or have deep linguistic and cultural knowledge and have high level language skills - it always helps and can be transformational.

Language graduates and people with bilingual and multilingual skills have access to a much broader range of career opportunities than the traditional paths of teaching, tutoring, translation, and interpreting alone. While these classic roles for linguists remain great options, they have evolved also with technology - for instance, teaching and tutoring are now widely enabled by digital delivery and online platforms, while translators work on everything from legal and medical documents to subtitling and video games. The worlds of business, the professions and government also offer numerous additional opportunities to use language skills.

In the business sector, language skills can be particularly valuable in marketing, sales, and customer facing roles. Marketing professionals can use their linguistic and cultural knowledge to adapt campaigns and brand messages for international markets, while sales teams leverage language skills to build relationships with international clients. Customer facing roles enable more effective communication with international customers, sometimes working across multiple time zones and cultural contexts.

Technical and operational roles also frequently require language expertise. Export coordinators manage cross-border shipments, credit controllers handle international payments and many international businesses small and large need languages to access markets and manage customs, tax and compliance requirements. These roles often combine language skills with specific industry knowledge and bring career resilience by combining two strengths.

Languages are also vital in the Armed Forces, security and intelligence services and in many frontline public services. UK Government departments are major employers of linguists and UK public services rely on language skills – not least Public Service Interpreters who support the police, courts, health services and local government in meeting the needs of the UK’s diverse language communities.

Conferences, event management, sports, music, museums and roles in cultural institutions similarly benefit from multilingual capabilities, particularly when organising international events, touring or coordinating with overseas partners.

Languages are an excellent skill for specialist careers in the sport and leisure industries. A lot of people from other countries play in major sports teams. The football industry is vast: and top players in UK teams from other countries and cultures may require medical, legal, financial or personal advice and support. Many will prefer to receive this in their own language. People who are bilingual or multilingual with Home, Heritage and Community languages are well placed to use the languages they have learnt in childhood in a variety of careers.

Success in developing a career which uses your languages often depends on maintaining and improving language skills alongside developing job, sector or industry-specific expertise. Many professionals find that their career paths evolve as they gain experience, often leading to roles or opportunities, which their languages facilitate, which they hadn't initially considered. The key is to keep using your languages and being open to different opportunities while building a foundation of practical career experience and proactively using your language skills whenever possible.

Across Europe more than half of all professionals use more than one language at work every day. It is common for many people - from apprentice roles through to senior executive positions - to be able to function comfortably in more than one language.

The numbers of people using their languages in the UK are fewer. But by embracing the many languages and linguists in our midst, the world of work in the UK can be more multilingual; and by more of us using our languages in our work, we can boost our careers, enrich our working lives and support the UK economy as a whole.