Apropos of nothing: people sharply underrate the utility of knowing a high-consequences language pair.
You'd think bilingual people are common in the world, and they are. And you'd think that they're common in corridors of power, and they are.
And yet...
You'd think bilingual people are common in the world, and they are. And you'd think that they're common in corridors of power, and they are.
And yet...
What actually happens is that, because the circle of functionaries and decisionmakers in every relevant organization who aren't bilingual (or don't trust their ability level) is far larger than those who are, the organization says "You know, we should have experts for this."
And everything that starts in language X will be sent to an expert for translation into Y before being fed back to a functionary. And this introduces a delay of approximately the same length as the organization's core analysis cycle, or more when those translators get swamped.
Also, after you get into an organization which has translators available and you are exposed to the culture which suggests, mostly accurately, that a professional translator is going to obliterate your reading comprehension, you *stop looking at things you can yourself read.*
Estimate for yourself, for some target consequential organization and language pair:
* How many people do they have total who speak that well enough to order dinner?
* To read a newspaper?
* A journal article?
This is a sobering exercise once you know the numbers at any org.
* How many people do they have total who speak that well enough to order dinner?
* To read a newspaper?
* A journal article?
This is a sobering exercise once you know the numbers at any org.
And when you Venn diagram the language skill with any deep professional expertise on any subject, the pool of people who can read it and understand it gets very constrained very, very, very fast.
