I am currently pursing a BA degree in Japanese at CSULB. I plan to become a translator/interpreter, but I feel like just majoring in Japanese isn’t enough. I want to work for a game company, but I don’t think I can do that with just a Japanese BA. It also seems like getting just a language degree is a bad thing. I am thinking of going into Marketing as well, but I am not sure if I should do that after I am done with Japanese, or try to take them both at once. But then, as I search around the internet, I see many people saying that Marketing isn’t a very beneficial degree, either. What are the chances of being able to work for a game company with a BA in Marketing and/or Japanese? What other jobs can I possibly get? How difficult is Marketing? Does it require a lot of writing essays? I assume there would be lots of researching, reporting, and presentation.
Another concern is salary. My friend majored in Sociology, but she doesn’t know what to do, so she went back to nursing. Nursing majors make $60,000 annually, while translators make around $40,000. I really don’t want to lose to her. And she, at this point, is my source of motivation. I honestly don’t know what else to do. Another friend of mine majors in Linguistic encouraged me to major in it, too, if I want to be a translator. But I dread reading books and writing essays so I declined. Hope to hear your advice.
If they’re lucky enough to even get a translator job-- it’s not like the world isn’t already flush w multilingual people. My kids’ int’l classmates are fluently multilingual down to subtle idiomatic nuances, and they’re just kids. And these classmates will go on to get a degree in something marketable like engineering. This is your competition.
Very simple translation is increasingly being effectively handled by software. The last time I went to Japan, Google Translator app was adequate to take care of all my needs.
Definitely get an additional degree in something else besides just Japanese.
Your kids are quite good, then. Most of the Asian American kids I have interacted with can barely translate anything for their life. But if that’s my competition, so be it.
I am definitely going to major in something else, as a backup plan. I am wondering if it’s a good choice to go into marketing. It seems like marketing doesn’t really have a good reputation among business and finance majors, either. And how likely am I going to find a job for a game company with a good salary with those two degrees?
@Whateverchan This is just from a logical basis and is not meant to put you down but, why would someone hire you? It does not, really, make sense to me. Because, as GMT said, you have kids that are pretty much born bilingual/multilingual. And someone who studies a language can never be 100% fluent in that language. So someone who speaks various languages fluently vs someone who just studied it, I dont really see the market potential for what you are pursuing.
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As for advice, I would say study something obscure that you can use your japanese with. Maybe something like Sales or international business. You could pick a gaming company that is going to be based in japan or moving to japan and pitch various sales ideas to the Japan market. Or for internation business, when a gaming company gets another HQ and it happens to be in Japan, you can help with that.
Marketing doesnt support japanese because its finding out where to sell the product, the best demograph and what not. But if you are trying to get into gaming then the demograph is just teens so a company doesnt really need help in that aspect. They also dont need help pricing the product because gaming products are usually free or have very set margins for profit (ie gen games = 60$).
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Such an interesting major choice haha, What made you choose japanese?
International Business has classes that are pretty math concentrated, and I doubt I can get past those. Same with Accounting and Finance. Perhaps not a game company, but any will do just fine. I was thinking of doing something like marketing a product of a company to foreign countries, or something similar. But then again, marketing probably requires great speaking and persuasive skills, which I am not sure if I am good at, either.
I decided to choose Japanese because of two reasons. First, it was simply my backup plan, and my original goal was engineering or computer science. Sadly, Calculus was as far as I could go, and I wasn’t smart enough to even pass CS1, so I had to give up. I was also interested in Japan and its culture ever since I was a kid. I was born in Vietnam, and Japan had a lot of influence in our country over the last two decades. I thought that since I liked Japanese, I could pursue a degree in it and do something with my life. I speak Vietnamese fluently as well, so I thought translating between 3 languages would be a nice idea. I personally interacted with many Asians who were born here, and the majority of them just can’t speak their native language. I am not sure what kind of kids you see, or where you live. And you can’t become fluent in another language if you don’t learn or use it.
I still like Japanese, and will pursue it to the end, though. After that, I will find another major that supports it. Just gotta find out what it should be…
A common misconception is that you have to work a career that exactly lines up with your major - so if you major in Japanese, you have to become a translator or interpreter or work in Japan; that if you major in marketing, you have to go into marketing; that if you major in philosophy, you’ll be unemployed because there aren’t any modern-day jobs that correspond to philosopher. That’s false. There are majors working in all kinds of fields - related and unrelated. You can major in Japanese and go into marketing. I know a young woman who majored in French and worked in the food business; a philosophy major who went onto work in business; a history major who served in the Navy as a surface warfare officer; a psychology major who went into marketing. Your major doesn’t have to determine your job.
The other thing is that if you “search around the Internet” you are bound to find someone who says that every major is useless; I see people saying the same thing about math, physics, economics and business. Basically every major other than engineering and computer science has been labeled “useless” at some point.
With that said, selecting a major that’s directly applicable to an area you know you’re interested in is a good idea. And, if you want to work for any kind of company, you have to bring value. Game companies do need marketing - video games are million-dollar enterprises these days, and they have marketing teams that rival big-budget movies. (I work at a very large game company.) They hire marketers all the time, but since working in a game company is competitive and lots of people want to do it, getting any job in the industry is difficult. You may want to take some side classes in computer science (and game design, if there are any available), as many game companies ask their marketers to be familiar with the product they’re marketing and have a little technical expertise.
I don’t understand this argument because engineering majors don’t go onto compete for jobs as translators. Even if they know another language, they may use it in the course of their work, but translation is a very specific skill and you can’t just pick any old engineer who took 3 years of Japanese in college to do it. You can’t even just cherry-pic someone fluent to do it, because again…it’s a trained skill. There are lots of people who are theoretically conversational in more than one language; there are not lots of people who are fluent AND have translation skills AND know video games well.
Video game companies usually have big ties to Japan because the video game industry started there and is still partially driven by large Japanese companies. Currently my team is working on at least two games with ties to Japanese developers; one member of my team regularly meets with Japanese businessmen and her knowledge of Japanese culture has been a plus there.
And when we’re talking about game localization, we’re not talking about “very simple translation.” This is a complex job that requires knowledge of local customs, mores, idioms, and more on both sides of the language.
Right now I’m staring at six jobs that require heavy and specific Japanese skills at the same internationally prominent, well-known games company in my area - four of them are separate translation/localization jobs (in Japanese). An Indeed search found more.
Why do you think you are going to lose your friend if she makes more than you? I make more than some of my friends and we’re still friends.
It is completely false that someone who learned a language as a second language cannot become 100% fluent in that language. I’m not sure where this information came from but it’s not true. And, as I pointed out above, translation is a skill - not everyone who speaks two languages is qualified to translate between the two of them.
OMG, this is also so false in so many ways.
First of all, that’s only part of what marketing is. Marketing is also about communicating with the consumer market - shaping an advertising and selling plan for a product, making sure consumers know what the product is and where to buy it, and other stuff.
Second of all, gaming markets target WAY WAY WAY more than just teenagers. The vast majority of gamers - especially gamers that actually spend money on games - are adults. This is my job; I actually do research and audience definition with video gamers. They are mostly adults. And even when gamers are kids, you also have to sell to their parents, because by and large parents are the ones buying games.
Third of all, Japan is the third biggest video game market in the world - Japanese gamers spend 12.5 billion on games every year. Many game companies are already headquartered in Japan, and even the American countries are very concerned with localization to Japan and trying to sell their product in Japan. There would absolutely be a need for a marketer with an understanding of the Japanese market.
As a side comment - 1) How do you think companies decided that games this generation would be $60? They figured out a profit model…with marketing folks. 2) Not all games are $60. 3) Games are not usually 100% free. There are some games that are “free-to-play,” which means they are nominally free to download but the extra stuff like downloadable content and power-ups cost money. Those absolutely need a marketing model to help the team figure out how to price those items so that the game makes money.
I have no answers for you, but I did want to encourage you. My dd is planning on majoring in French and Russian. She loves them both. She has talked with numerous depts and all of them have been very positive about employment opportunities. She hasn’t decided what direction she wants to go with her languages yet, but that is ok b/c just just finished her jr yr of high school. She doesn’t need to have all of the answers now.
Accounting is not a math heavy major. I don’t know why people think that. If you already took up to calculus. Then you already met the math requirement for accounting.
OP, what to you know about the game industry, what would you bring to the table besides some ability to speak Japanese and some studies in marketing?
And your competition for translating work will not be the kids you know who don’t speak well. It with be those people who do.
Translating, as an occupation, requires a huge vocabulary, more than you get in classes. It’s a very immediate skill, not the same as a class assignment. It’s more than the ability to communicate as a traveler or at a party. You need something akin to immersion. And then, to use this in specific industries, you need all the technical lingo of those.
Try to get some experience in marketing and/or business.
I think you’ve got everything backwards. Study Japanese first, then find a career later. It should have been the other way around. Find a career first, then use the Japanese skills to help springboard you later in life.
I work for a large company and we do a lot of work in Asia. Most of the people who advance well up the career ladder in Asia are good at their jobs, and their ability to be multi-lingual is just a bonus. Just find a career that is useful and marketable: any of the STEM fields is a always a good choice.
When you’re 18 and in college, you don’t have to work this way - I think most people end up in careers they didn’t necessarily anticipate in college. It’s pretty common for a student to pick a major first, develop some experience and skills through internships, classes, workshops and jobs, and leverage that into a career they like.
Also, I wish people would stop blanket generalizing the “STEM” fields. The career prospects for a major in biology or chemistry are different than a major in math or physics or in computer science or aerospace engineering. And they’re not necessarily better than well-equipped students in some non-STEM field. Besides, the idea is not just to be generally “marketable” for the largest quantity of jobs; the idea is to have a good range of jobs one is actually interested in and that one can be successful at. If you are terrible at writing code, it doesn’t matter if there are 250 software engineering jobs in your area; your code is bad, so you won’t get hired!
You could major in Japanese or sociology or economics or political science and still have a good, successful career.
Thank you very much for your insight and advice, Juliet.
I just took a phone interview with an interpreting company, and then I realize how horrible I am. XD Oh well, I gotta start somewhere. I am not afraid of losing her because I make less money than her. It’s that I don’t want to lose TO her. I get that money isn’t the most important thing. I was merely aiming for a decent job to support an ordinary life, too. But my pride and jealousy pushed me to take a step further. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.
@sensation723B But don’t you have to be good at math to major in it? Or if you get a job as an accountant, you have to do math really well, right?
@lookingforward I am a gamer. I know what’s going in the game industry, and what the players want or do not want. You are right that communication skills are very important, and I am trying to work on that. I am also going to take a marketing class next spring, after I am done with the GE requirements.
@sgopal2 That’s… exactly what I did. I wanted to become a game designer, so I took advanced math courses and CS. Flunked that. Then I wanted to become a translator, so I took Japanese. Now, let’s see what else I can do with marketing/business.
So I talked to a career counselor today, regarding which of the three choices Accounting, Finance, and Marketing is right for me. He said that having a degree is nice to prove that I am book-smart, but employers will want to hire people with actual experience. So, even if I just have a Japanese degree, if I have experience doing accounting or financial related job, or similar internships, I would still be hired.
He also said that majoring in another field is going to take me a long time, so he advised me to minor in Accounting or Finance, along with my Japanese major. I don’t know if I should choose to do this or not. I am still considering which one to take, between Accounting and Finance. But I think I might play it safe by majoring, not minoring. But do you guys think what he said is right? I don’t think an advisor would give false advice, but I am not sure if minoring is a good idea…
And now that I think about it, would I be able to get internship without a proper degree? How would I get hired at some place and get experience if I don’t have anything to back up my resume?
Basically Japanese major + Finance/Accounting minor + internships. Yay or nay? :-?
