Fluency in a foreign language can translate into a world of professional possibilities

Black Enterprise, May, 2000 by Sonja Brown Stokely

THREE YEARS AGO, EDWARD HARLEY WAS AN ENGLISH TEACHER at the Nova Language School in Tokyo. His class schedule found him beginning his day at 9 a.m. and wrapping up some 12 hours later. Of course long hours aren't an unusual component of most teachers' routines. In fact the only odd thing about his experience was the very subject he was teaching. Harley was instructing a class of adult Japanese students.

Speaking English is very trendy in Japan. But it's still rather uncommon for a 23-year-old African American to be teaching it to natives in Japan--a position that wound, of course, require him to be fluent in Japanese.

Whether you're living in a big city or a rural village, Japanese is not a language most African Americans are exposed to on a frequent basis. Harley admits he had a bit of a head start, because his paternal grandmother is Japanese. "I've been hearing bits and pieces of the language all mylife. But I didn't get serious about speaking Japanese until college," he says. So while he began studying a second language out of curiosity, it has since developed into a career opportunity that has taken him half way across the globe.

With the focus now on e-commerce and the integration of technology into the workplace, the old-fashioned skill of verbal communication threatens to get lost in the shuffle. But according to many career analysts, the demand for workers with bilingual abilities is actually on the rise as more Third World countries are becoming legitimate players in the business arena.

In some careers in the U.S. the ability to speak and write languages such as Spanish, French or German is looked upon as having a specialized skill. And employers are willing to pay for that skill. For example, in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, California, police officers and firefighters can make an extra 5% to 10% on their salaries if they are fluent in Spanish.

So not everyone is giving the spoken word short shrift. Harley is just one of many African Americans to have taken his bilingual skills and turned them into moneymaking careers.

ORIENTING HIMSELF

Harley never thought of using his language skill as a career booster. During his senior year as an English major at Tulane University in New Orleans, he took a beginners level Japanese course on a whim and liked it. But after graduating in 1995, Harley decided he wanted to learn more by taking the international route. "I got on the Internet and found an ad from Nova, an educational company that trains and sends Americans to Japan to teach English."

Harley was chosen by Nova to go overseas to teach English for 14 months. But he soon decided his time in Japan wasn't enough. "I wanted to go back, this time to actually study Japanese," he says. "Teaching English in Japan only requires you to know rudimentary Japanese. I wanted to be fluent." So he returned to Japan on his own with a tourist visa and spent three intense months studying Japanese at the Kai Conversational School. Now fluent in the language, he returned home and currently works as a copy editor for S Plus Inc., a small graphic design and advertising company in New York City. Harley, who earns approximately $30,000 a year, ensures that any text translated to English from Japanese is grammatically and syntactically correct, and often acts as an English/Japanese liaison officer between the company and its clients, such as Canon, the maker of cameras and other electronic office equipment. "I enjoy what I'm doing and I'm happy I found a job that allows me to use my bilingual ability," he says.

Harley found just one niche where knowing a second language reaps rewards. But the demand for bilingual skills varies depending on the career you're exploring, says Donna Sabatino, operations manager at Career Blazers employment agency in New York City. "For instance, in the engineering/technical field, employees who speak Asian languages are in demand, while French and Spanish are the dominant languages in the social services and medical fields."

Alex Rodriguez, president and CEO of Diversity Consulting Group, a Santa Barbara, California-based executive search firm, says sales is also an area where second language skills are in high demand. "It can -break the ice, set the tone and establish a quick rapport." Rodriguez should know. Prior to working for the Group, he worked as a car salesman. "I was the only one of a group of salesmen who spoke Spanish and we worked on commission. I wound up handling all our Spanish-speaking clients. Needless to say, I was very successful."

GLOBAL PHILANTHROPY

As a program assistant for the World Bank, Josephine Armar works for the Washington, D.C.-based development assistance organization that lends money to impoverished countries across the globe. Working for a special program for the African Agricultural Division, Armar uses French to communicate with most of her clients in Africa.

"At the World Bank, employees are given a premium for being fluent in another language," says Armar, who earns approximately $44,000 a year. "Applicants have to be screened very carefully just to make sure they aren't boasting about language skills to obtain the premium," she says.