Asian languages can be heard in all major Australian cities. If you head to Sydney or Melbourne it is apparent that Asian people are very well integrated into Australian society. Like a number of other major cities around the world you will find a bustling Chinatown, featuring some amazing food and merchandise.
Because Australia is situated nearest to South East Asia, particularly countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea, China and Japan, they are the nations which usually conduct a lot of trade with Australia.
Australia has been trading with these countries for a substantial time period which has resulted in the natural migration of a large number of Asian men and women to Australia. They are an integral piece in the jigsaw puzzle of the country representing the countries which matter most to Australia, their big trading partners.
Because of this migration of individuals over generations you might expect the volume of Asian language speakers and perhaps translation services to increase, however the first big study of Asian languages in Australian educational institutions in more than a decade shows declining involvement rates in spite of the Rudd Government’s $62 million four-year program to reverse the trend.
The research by the Asia Education Foundation at Melbourne University verifies a continuing and dramatic drop in the amount of students studying Indonesian, Japanese, Korean or Chinese.
Indonesian is faring the worst and might disappear at year 12 level by 2020, the study warns.
Japanese is also waning significantly, while growth in Korean and Chinese is originating from native or heritage speakers.
Overall, huge numbers of students drop Asian languages entirely before year 12.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd again this week guaranteed to make every effort to raise Asian literacy, which several specialists say has essentially collapsed.
What has not been addressed is why this is taking place? How can there be such a decrease in speakers of Asian languages when they play a vital part throughout the economy?
This is a challenging question to answer and there is no right or wrong. There are various factors which we can speculate about, for example, perhaps children of Asian families that are raised in Australia don’t see the need to speak their parent’s language because they consider themselves more Australian than Asian.
Another possibility may be that because there are so many Asian people learning the English language, which is the global language of business there is no requirement for English to Japanese translation or English to Chinese translation.
Explaining why this is transpiring in Australia is difficult to answer with any guarantee. What is obvious is the fact that if things keep going in this particular direction, the capability for effective Asian language translation in Australia may suffer