Be Ready for a Career in Languages

Join us for an exciting languages event on Wednesday 8 October 2025 at the Assembly Buildings in Belfast.

A Career in Languages

You'll meet leading academics and graduates from Heriot-Watt University’s Languages and Intercultural Studies department for a day dedicated to advancing your language skills. From 10am to 3pm, engage in a series of fun-filled workshops and taster sessions, giving you the opportunity to enhance your knowledge and explore languages such as Chinese and British Sign Language.

This event is suitable for A-level students with a solid foundation in languages including Spanish, French, and German.

Please note that you must book your place on the French, Spanish, and German sessions. No booking is required for the Chinese and BSL taster sessions.

Wednesday 8 October 2025 at the Assembly Buildings in Belfast.

What’s on throughout the day?

10:00 – 11:00 – Keynote Lecture:
From Words to Worlds: how studying languages and cultures unlocks opportunities.
11:00 – 11:45 – French, Chinese, and BSL sessions
11:45 – 12:30 – Spanish, Chinese, and BSL sessions
12:30 – 13:00 – Lunch break
13:00 – 13:45 – German, Chinese, and BSL sessions
13:45 – 14:30 – Panel discussion: Career in Languages

Keynote Lecture: From Words to Worlds: how studying languages and cultures unlocks opportunities.

Translation and interpreting graduates are among the most successful following their degrees: our graduates at Heriot-Watt University find professional jobs more quickly than most business, computing and engineering students, for instance. The careers chosen by our graduates range far beyond translation and interpreting alone. With the explosion of machine translation and AI, this might seem surprising; but in fact, the world needs highly skilled human experts more than ever, in important and rewarding contexts such as health, justice, law and migration. This session will give you a peek into the exciting opportunities that lie ahead if you choose to become a language and communication expert.

Can your French skills help an unlucky tourist?

What if someone needed you to interpret for them? Do you think you could pull it out of the bag? Learn about basic translation and interpreting techniques, try your hands at helping a rather unlucky French tourist who needs your assistance, and get a glimpse of how your language skills could make a difference in people's lives.

Could your Spanish skills assist in a real-life scenario?

Step into the shoes of an interpreter, tackling real-life scenarios. Have you ever wondered how you'd handle a situation in a healthcare, justice, or police setting? Now's your chance to find out! You’ll see essential interpreting techniques and practice in action with engaging, realistic exercises. Whether aiding a Spanish-speaking patient at a hospital, assisting in a police inquiry, or supporting someone in a legal setting, this session will show you how powerful and impactful your language skills can be

Advance your German: practical interpreting and translating skills

Interpreting isn't just for international conferences! In this session, you'll learn how your German skills can make a difference and make people’s lives better. You'll get to try helping an Austrian exchange student at your school, visit a German Christmas market with friends, and interpret for a group of tourists. You'll find out how useful (and fun) working across languages is.

Introduction to Chinese: basics of character writing, pinyin, and tones

When you learn Chinese, you have to master new skills like the strokes needed to write characters and Pinyin, the Romanization system for Chinese pronunciation, as well as tones, which are the pitch variations that distinguish word meanings in Chinese. This taster session for complete beginners will give you a chance to have a go!

Try your hand(s) at British Sign Language!

Have you ever watched sign language interpreters in action at live events or on screen and wondered how they do it? Or maybe you’d like to be able to learn a few signs to communicate if you meet someone who’s deaf. This BSL taster session for complete beginners will cover some basic signs and fingerspelling, as well as some common myths and misunderstandings about using sign languages.

Panel discussion: careers for professional linguists

Where can your language skills take you? Explore mainstream and alternative careers for linguists and hear from some of our star graduates on how their journey with us shaped their career paths to success. You will have the opportunity to ask questions and seek advice in this interactive panel.

Why attend this free event?

Advance your knowledge

Learn how your language skills can make a difference and be applied in real-world settings

Introduction to Chinese and British Sign Language

Our taster sessions are for complete beginners to master new skills in Chinese and British Sign Language

Career in Languages

Academics will discuss exciting opportunities that are available if you’d like to become a language and communication expert

Undergraduate programmes

Discover why you should choose to study an undergraduate degree at Heriot-Watt and learn more about our applied language and BSL programmes