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November 21

Professional services that need more than 2 languages

Knowing 3 languages might be useful for a translator, for example. But every translation project can be split in pairs of languages, hence no person with more than 2 languages are needed. Are there tasks in the real world where the person providing the service needs more than 2 languages? That is, there's no way round it or no easy way round it?--C est moi anton (talk) 15:42, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I knew a production coordinator who needed to know (at least) three languages because it was a multi-national company with studios and/or offices in Japan, Germany, Canada and US (and perhaps elsewhere).

It's very common in diplomacy. Many countries recruit diplomats/foreign service officers who are already fluent in their national language, English and another foreign language. In countries like Belgium, Switzerland and Finland, where there is more than one national language, being trilingual is a basic requirement. --Xuxl (talk) 13:00, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@C est moi anton: If you accompany Deaf Americans abroad for a conference in, say, France, you may need to be accompanied by an interpreter who knows ASL, French, and English. And if the conference is about deaf topics and attended by French deaf people, you may need an interpreter who is quadrilingual and knows FSL as well, or else two trilingual interpreters. Mathglot (talk) 04:14, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"The Kingdom of Belgium has three official languages: Dutch, French, and German".

"The four national languages of Switzerland are German, French, Italian and Romansh" Alansplodge (talk) 12:16, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]