In the ninth in our weekly series on the ten most important languages for the UK’s future, as identified by the British Council’s Languages the Future report, we turn to the fifth most commonly spoken language in the world, Arabic. Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp is an Arabic translator and teacher and co-founder of Babel Babies, a company promoting language-learning in families.
Arabic is in great demand and there’s a shortage of well-qualified speakers
Ten years ago last week, I started my first graduate job in the UK civil service, where I began studying Arabic on a 15-month intensive course for translators. This was my dream job: studying another language full-time and being paid a decent salary, too. Now, in my freelance work translating and teaching Arabic, I aim to give English speakers access to an unfamiliar world, a vibrant culture, and a perspective on history and politics that we rarely see in our western media.