My spouse and I feel that if you are immigrating into the US, you need to speak English. Of course as an MT I do not like my work being threatened by India (I previously worked in bank customer service, and my company there outsourced 3000 jobs to India and laid off all the US CSRs). My spouse grew up in Detroit which is now classified as a" dead city" with the highest unemployment rate and some of the lowest house values in the nation due to outsourcing of the auto companies to Mexico and many auto parts and steel are now made in Asia.
However, we may even learn Spanish. He is retraining in Nursery and Greenhouse Management and it just makes sense as that will help him manage the laborers. if he ever owns his own biz, we will insist on legitimate papers for every worker.
You can transcribe between two languages from home, just like you do MT from home. Spanish does not pay as much as, say, Arabic (a language I strongly wanted to learn) but there is more demand for it and it is easier to learn for an English speaker (and if we all get lucky, our overseas Middle East involvement will cease and there will be no more need for transcription of Arabic to English. Somehow I don't think we will get that lucky).
What gets me is people who move here and still do not speak the language after 5 or 10 years!!!
I would not even visit another country as a TOURIST without studying the language for months ahead of time if there was not a lot of English spoken there, and I would study some of the indigenous language anyway. It's just a sign of respect.
I think it is going to be to our benefit to be bilingual but I don't see us ever not having at least some ambivalence about the people we speak it to (but I think we will meet some good people as well). |
English - MKJ
