Endangered language professionals?

Daniel Morin

In a report released in October 2007, the Association de l’industrie de la langue/Language Industry Association (AILIA) sounded the alarm about Canada’s scarcity of language professionals, especially its serious shortage of language teachers.

“The shortage of second-language teachers is so severe that school boards can barely staff their schools. And shortages in other language professions are harming Canada’s ability to compete internationally,” contends AILIA.

While the view among University of Ottawa experts is less alarmist, they acknowledge that the data in the report entitled “Career Profiles in Canada’s Language Industry” seem more or less consistent with reality.

Luise Von Flotow, director of the School of Translation and Interpretation (STI), admits there is an undeniable shortage of translators and interpreters in Canada, which means the School’s students may have excellent training and employment opportunities. However, she does not believe this shortage will decrease Canada’s competitive advantage.

“It’s logical that if one in three translators works freelance and most others work for governments, they have little chance to be competitive on the world market. I also doubt Canadian translators have ever supported large-scale competition on world markets. They work mainly for the domestic market, and almost exclusively from English to French.”

Von Flotow is concerned that anglophones and men seem particularly reluctant to enter the profession, so that it has increasingly become the domain of francophone women. She fears this may create a new “pink collar ghetto” whose professionals are not paid their fair market value.

Richard Clément, director of the Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute (OLBI), believes the shortage of language teachers is symptomatic of a larger problem, whereby language is not valued as the bearer of cultural knowledge and the expression of a unique identity.

Clément is especially critical of the widespread attitude that “anyone can be a second-language instructor,” and that it is sufficient to speak a language to be able to teach it. As an example, he points out that many language schools hire unqualified people to teach English overseas.

Many teachers also work in less than ideal conditions, says Hilaire Lemoine, executive in residence at OLBI. “In many cases they don’t have their own classroom, and are required to teach groups of 35 students with often unchallenging course material. Lastly, language learning is not seen as a subject of value but as an obligation.”

In such a context it is hard for language teachers to be seen as role models, which does not inspire students to enter the profession, adds Lemoine.

Aside from awareness-raising, which he considers integral to OLBI’s mandate, Clément sees a possible solution in the creation of “incentive programs” that could generate student interest by promoting the value of language as a gateway to genuine cultural understanding. For example, international relations programs could be paired with a language component.

Similarly, he feels the University’s immersion program is “an extraordinary tool, since it allows students to put [language] learning into context.”