Which Languages Useful for Engineering ?

[brucehoult]

Only a small percentage of people in China with a university level education understand English well enough to hold a simple conversation.

Have seen some people with that level of proficiency, but never thought that could be the majority.

I don't have experience in China, but I just spent three years in Moscow. Finding English-speaking people in the supermarket or a taxi or even a restaurant is very hit and miss ... I'd say less than one in ten.

However if you look in technical companies such as Samsung or Intel then ability to read and write understandable English is 100% and 90%+ have good spoken English too. I think it's very nearly the same in local Russian companies in a technical field too -- almost everyone in electronics or programming can read and write English.

[coppice]

Chinese really means Mandarin, rather than Cantonese or traditional, and I think knowing that could very well open up whole new markets to the west - look at Dave's 3 cent micro-controller for example. There are lots of China or Taiwanese only parts with datasheets to match.

For written Chinese traditional Chinese is still pretty important for engineering documents, because of its use in Taiwan. Documents which the Taiwanese send to China will be translated to simplified Chinese, but lots of other documents remain only in traditional Chinese.

there is always google translate:

对于书面的中国传统汉语，由于其在台湾的使用，对于工程文件仍然非常重要。台湾人寄给中国的文件将被翻译成简体中文，但许多其他文件只保留在繁体中文中。

@BlueSkull, what does this say in simplified characters?

Exactly what you expect in traditional Chinese. I don't write traditional Chinese, but I read traditional Chinese just fine.
Ancient Chinese is part of mandatory education in high school.

Edit: I thought it was traditional Chinese. My phone's default Chinese font looks weird, and it renders traditional Chinese somehow.

Well, here's the translation to English:

For written Chinese in traditional Chinese, due to the use in Taiwan, is still very important for engineering documents. Documents mailed from Taiwanese to China will be translated in Simplified Chinese, but many other files are only preserved in Traditional Chinese.

As you can see, Google did an excellent job translating English to Chinese.

Translating between Chinese and English with Google translate is rather hit and miss. It often does very well with simple direct speaking, as it did in this case. It frequently gets things completely backwards when the writing is more complex. Try using more complex tenses and you can get some weird translations. It doesn't get irony at all.

When translating between traditional and simplified Chinese, Google translate has two main issues to deal with. Technical terms in Taiwan are frequently very different from the terms used in Mainland China. Basically terms which were coined after 1949 tend to be different. Google isn't that great at making the necessary changes. Traditional to simplified is usually pretty straightforward, but simplified to traditional is more complex - a simplified character often maps to one of several traditional characters, and Google translate isn't very good at choosing the right option.

[schmitt trigger]

So that is the reason for some hilarious Chinglish manual translations? 

[Vtile]

Python
Lisp
(pick a flavour) Basic
Object Pascal

[001]

Only a small percentage of people in China with a university level education understand English well enough to hold a simple conversation.

Have seen some people with that level of proficiency, but never thought that could be the majority.

I don't have experience in China, but I just spent three years in Moscow. Finding English-speaking people in the supermarket or a taxi or even a restaurant is very hit and miss ... I'd say less than one in ten.

huh
I spend few mounth at Moscow
In Russia taxi drivers don`t speak russian too    since all of them are from midlle east countries

[Mechatrommer]

Hmm the odd of them and you knowing my language is one in a million.

[Mechatrommer]

Hmm the odd of them and you knowing my language is one in a million.

I actually once had a classmate in US who speaks fluent English and Mandarin, whose native tongue is Malay.

i was talking about non-native malay. its common here for people to know 3-5 languages including the national language, chinese and indian being most of them (malay, english, chinese (for chinese) and india (for indian)) i can speak and understand 3 languages (malay, english and my native/ethnic language) i know very little bit chinese and arab. if i want to learn a language, the first word i will learn is how to say "i dont know" or "i dont understand" it solved many confusions

[Orlando]

Well yes, english and german are the most useful languages in my experience. But as recomendation you should try looking for the Brands languages you are interested in, for example, BK Precision, Rigol, Volkswagen, Ford, GW Instek, SAP... and then you will have a better idea of what you will need to get the job you want.

[CatalinaWOW]

The answers to this seem to ignore the fact that there are several reasons for using a language.  What is important varies with purpose.

Day to day life.  Includes buying things from wherever.  Here the answer is 1. The native tongue(s) where you are living.  2.  English   There is no 3 at the moment though Chinese is elbowing its way in since if you want to buy anything that is the place to go.

Background technical information.  Latin has dropped off this list for engineers and the order of the top three is subject to debate but 1.  English  2.  German  3.  French  4.  Russian  5.  Japanese.  Again, Chinese either should be on this list or will be soon.  Detail matters here too.  For example if you want computer architecture, logic, programming theory and so on English dominates.  If you want closed form math, approximation methods and other things like that Russian rules. 

Current hacks and technical activity.  My list here is biased by my own language limitations.  I won't try to order them but I have found good stuff in English, German, French and Russian (in that order).  There seems to be good stuff in Chinese, but Google translate just isn't good enough to get those kinds of web information out for me.

[westfw]

Only a small percentage of people in China with a university level education understand English well enough to hold a simple conversation. Many of them feel pretty bad about this, as they all studied English from kindergarten to their last year at university.

That sounds painfully similar to foreign language education in the US.  University-bound students are nearly required to have studied "a foreign language" in school (usually starting in Middle School (age 13?), after which you can sort-of survive "life" as long as native speakers of that language are willing to speak slowly and listen with a forgiving ear.  But trying to follow full-speed conversation, or understand the plot of a novel is a bit beyond us :-(  Developing actual fluency requires PRACTICE, which is ... difficult.(OTOH, a lot of the technical details of English grammar and tenses and so on end up being learned in the foreign language classes, since actual English classes tend to focus on vocabulary, comprehension and interpretation.)

[djacobow]

Binary language of moisture vapurators / binary load lifters.

[beanflying]

Used to be Fortran, Pascal on a HP3000 mainframe and a Hex keypad for the 6800 micros were my other Languages ..... I am so old than IBM AT's were cutting edge 

In spite of being an EE I worked more in a process environment with Pumps and controls. At the time German was the one language I wished I knew more of apart from 'Australian'. German was in much higher use than any other European language as a second one to English in technical papers and manuals. Prior to what is now a simple task via electronic translators (flawed as they are) breaking down technical German words into 'manageable' chunks was useful and if I still couldn't sort them out break out the German-English dictionary or these days google translate.

If you are just getting going on your career I would go with English First not for personal reasons but it tends to be the second language taught the most widely around the world making it perhaps the most universal. These days it is a toss up between German and Mandarin/Chinese (simplified) depending on your specialty and the countries you will be working with most for another.

Just realized the O.P is Turkish so English and German for you and I am sure you have some knowledge of both to build on. One place I want to go back to and spend another few months 

At my age electronic translations and laughing at the results that gets will have to do me

[beanflying]

Mandarin/Chinese (simplified)

Depending on where you live, Traditional Chinese education may be more accessible due to the prevalence population of decedents of Cantonese immigrants immigrated more than 100 years ago.
And anyway the difference is not that big. I work in teams with members from Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. And we don't have problems communicating in both written and spoken Chinese.

I would agree in Australia for example we did have until recently a much higher percentage of Cantonese speakers but it is now about evenly split due to recent arrivals. If I was younger and still had a 'real' job I would be doing some Mandarin studies would make a lot of sense.

In Turkey however German is very commonly used as a second language and they have some very strong business and social ties to Germany still. So for the OP it makes sense to go down that path.

[rstofer]

I spent some time living and working in Singapore.  English is their first language although it is spoken with a decidedly British accent.  I takes a few words spoken before I get in synch.  Best job of my life!

When I was stationed in Germany back in '66-'67, I noticed that most of the young people (say around 20) spoke pretty good English.  The older shopkeepers usually had at least one young person around with whom I could converse.  The fact that I took 4 years of German in high school didn't prepare me for the speed at which Germans can speak their native language.  I could read the signs and menus and that's what was important!

What did German do for me?  I'm convinced that I was shipped to Germany vs Vietnam based on those years of study.  It was a wonderful tour of duty and I really enjoyed the food and drink.

[coppice]

I spent some time living and working in Singapore.  English is their first language although it is spoken with a decidedly British accent.

Are you sure that was Singapore? Singapore and Malaysia have their own very distinctive accent when speaking English, and its nothing like British English.