Bilingual babies and beyond

[http://goglobalatsnu.blogspot.com/]

This morning, I tweeted on twitter and updated on facebook about an interesting article on examiner.com with the title "Reasons why you should raise a bilingual child" (http://www.examiner.com/x-17553-Denver-Bilingual-Families-Examiner~y2009m7d29-It-cant-hurt). I want to follow up on one statement the author of the article made. In speaking about her desire for her child to be multilingual, she said, "It can't hurt [emphasis in original]." She went on to say, "It hasn't hurt me. On the contrary, being a bilingual journalist has opened twice as many doors as being a monolingual one would ever have!"

This simple statement about doors being opened to a bilingual journalist reinforces one of the points I have been making to students interested in Southern Nazarene University's Spanish-English Translation major. SNU's translation major prepares students for a variety of careers in addition to translation and interpreting. I think the translation major would make an excellent course of study for anyone interested in journalism. What is often not appreciated about translators is that above all else, good translators are good writers. One of our major emphases in the translation major is to make sure our students write well in English and in Spanish. It is not enough to write well in one of the languages. We expect our students to write well in both languages. Also, we do not just want our translation majors to be able to churn out good term papers in Spanish and English and nothing else. They have to be able to write in a variety of styles for many different contexts.

I am convinced that being able to write well in both languages and being able to understand fully and speak competently in both languages will open doors for students in all sorts of fields where highly skilled written and oral communication is an essential element of the job, such as journalism, editing, public relations, international business, international project management, translation (of course) and other fields.

If you're interested in learning more, check out the details of SNU's translation major at http://goglobalatsnu.net/translation.htm.