Youth Edge: From subtitling movies to collabs with hotels, foreign language students explore a world of new opportunities

For 21-year-old Kanvi, her interest in language has meant reading Tintin comics set in different French colonies like Congo or Algeria. “The same language can be spoken, understood and adapted so differently in different contexts! From phonetics to etymology, semantics and morphology, it is fascinating to me how we learn a language and all that it takes to be able to make a meaningful sentence,” said the linguistics enthusiast who is studying French at the Department of Foreign Languages, Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU). Kanvi wants to go on to become a researcher.

The Head of the Department of Foreign Languages of SPPU, Swati Acharya, said, “Today, translation, transcriptions and interpretation are not the only avenues for students of foreign languages. Opportunities are increasing.”

Explaining the various ways in which languages are connected to diverse fields, she said, “French has a lot of relevance in food, cuisines and music. Knowledge of German or Japanese helps in the field of technology industry as these countries have been the leaders in that. The Spanish language, because of the culture, has had connections with music and dance and students who are into these fields often also take up Spanish. Russian literature has had value especially for a country like India where a lot of Russian literature was circulated at earlier points in history so students interested in that would often go for it.”

Interestingly, it is students of SPPU’s Department of Foreign Languages who often write subtitles for several films that are screened during the Pune International Film Festival. They have also had short stints at some hotels of the city where they assisted the staff in understanding foreign cuisines, etiquettes and greetings among other things to offer better hospitality for international guests.

With increased access to worldwide media, a globalised economy and innovative collaborations, the horizons for people with knowledge of foreign languages have considerably broadened.

While these options are still new and upcoming fields which do not always mean a full-time job yet, opportunities for making knowledge of foreign languages a viable source of income have increased.

Five years ago, engineer Tanaya Panse was working with an automobile company. When they got a Japanese client, her interest in the language piqued. Today she is doing a full-time masters in Japanese and is well on her way to make language-teaching her full-time job. She already takes online and in-person classes for students. During her free time, she likes to visit Japanese food joints in the city.

With online classes becoming the norm, openings for independent tutoring or working for coaching platforms have increased manifold. Tutoring and working at coaching centres is one of the most popular and reliable sources of income for foreign language students.

Sagar, a 25-year-old commerce student who had a short stint in a German company, has now taken up online German language classes with a zeal. He said, “It will improve my job prospects manifold and perhaps in the future I could even consider migrating to Germany.”

Shiva Prakash Joshi, course coordinator at the Goethe Institut, told The Indian Express, “Pune is the capital of the German industry in India. Almost 400 companies, from Mercedes and Volkswagen to small companies with 15-20 employees, have centres in Pune. There is a high demand for young graduates in the automobile and software industries.”

Top 3 Foreign Languages in Pune:

French

German

Japanese

Average payment for freshers:

The work is often more project and assignment based than dependent on monthly salaries.

Freshers can earn between Rs 300-800 per hour teaching a foreign language through private tuitions or online platforms.

For one hour of transcription, freshers can earn between Rs 800 and Rs 2,000.

The payment for one hour of translation can be between Rs 1,200 and Rs 4,000.

The payment is higher if it is a technical, legal or medical document.

Translation and transcription for relatively uncommon languages like Mandarin Chinese or Korean is higher than average.