Effectively multilingual in English/Chinese/Cantonese, is PRC/HK/TW suitable for me?

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  1. #1

    Effectively multilingual in English/Chinese/Cantonese, is PRC/HK/TW suitable for me?

    Hi All,

    I'm a 33yr old Singapore Chinese male, with 9 years of working experience in IT.

    The aim of my maiden post here is not to find jobs in HK but to see what can I do with my language skills.

    I grew up on a fairly strange language environment. My grandparents and Father spoke Cantonese to me while I was still a toddler, while my Mom spoke mainly Chinese (and forced me to study hard at it too) and I attended a pure English speaking school all the way till high school.

    As a result of this funny mixture of language learning experiences, I became effectively bilingual in English & Chinese, and with fluency in Cantonese that I can pass off as a local Hong Konger in most situations. I can do English & Chinese translation in both business and technical (IT mainly) context, and can even write in traditional & simplified Chinese that is specific to either Mainland China or Taiwan.

    I guess I gained the above skills through many years of reading both English & Chinese newspapers, watching cable tv (TVBJ and TVB8) and discovery channel, all the while soaking up the subtitles as they flash across the screen.

    In Singapore, my language skills are rarely discovered since the spoken and written language is English. Its funny that when I speak to my friends and customers from China, they thought I came from Beijing, while the rest of the English speaking friends think I'm just another pseudo Guei-Lo (or Ang Moh as they call it here in Singapore).

    That said, I've always wondered what I can do with my language skills. I always thought that being armed with these languages, I could easily build a career in the Greater China region, but I haven't had such opportunities yet.

    What do you guys & gals think? Would my language skills be of any practical value in the current state of economy?



    Cheers,

    autoclave


  2. #2

    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Hong Kong
    Posts
    2,260
    Quote Originally Posted by autoclave:
    Hi All,

    I'm a 33yr old Singapore Chinese male, with 9 years of working experience in IT.

    The aim of my maiden post here is not to find jobs in HK but to see what can I do with my language skills.

    I grew up on a fairly strange language environment. My grandparents and Father spoke Cantonese to me while I was still a toddler, while my Mom spoke mainly Chinese (and forced me to study hard at it too) and I attended a pure English speaking school all the way till high school.

    As a result of this funny mixture of language learning experiences, I became effectively bilingual in English & Chinese, and with fluency in Cantonese that I can pass off as a local Hong Konger in most situations. I can do English & Chinese translation in both business and technical (IT mainly) context, and can even write in traditional & simplified Chinese that is specific to either Mainland China or Taiwan.

    I guess I gained the above skills through many years of reading both English & Chinese newspapers, watching cable tv (TVBJ and TVB8) and discovery channel, all the while soaking up the subtitles as they flash across the screen.

    In Singapore, my language skills are rarely discovered since the spoken and written language is English. Its funny that when I speak to my friends and customers from China, they thought I came from Beijing, while the rest of the English speaking friends think I'm just another pseudo Guei-Lo (or Ang Moh as they call it here in Singapore).

    That said, I've always wondered what I can do with my language skills. I always thought that being armed with these languages, I could easily build a career in the Greater China region, but I haven't had such opportunities yet.

    What do you guys & gals think? Would my language skills be of any practical value in the current state of economy?



    Cheers,

    autoclave
    having multiple language abilities is always an advantage in this increasingly globalised economy. knowing mandarin and english is great since these are the probably the most useful to know at the moment in terms of business.

    there are so many jobs around the world (not just in china, hk, taiwan) who could use your language abilities, but it would also depends on whether you ca do the job at hand.
    Good luck!

  3. #3

    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Posts
    399

    Cantonese is a form of Chinese. Don't you mean "Mandarin"?


  4. #4

    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Posts
    1,561

    Agree, that what you can do with langauge skills depends a lot on your other qualifications (unless you want to be a professional translator, I suppose). Most people I work with in the finance and legal industries in HK (including everyone from secretaries and IT guys to the professionals) are multilingual - Cantonese, English and Mandarin, so I'm not sure how truely unique the skill is out here.