Italian language course: Courses at DU

Sonia Sarkar
[ 28 Jul, 2006 0346hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: What the most sought-after courses — B Com (H) or economics (H) cannot offer you, a BA (H) in Spanish and Italian can. Well, it can at least fetch you a Rs 4.78-lakh per-annum package and a prestigious position in an IT firm.

The course is being offered to a DU student this year, thus attracting more foreign language aspirants especially the 90 percenters in the department of German and Romance Studies, which has already overshot its admissions.

Japanese and Chinese too are the hot favourites this season as these languages can also offer you a handsome salary of Rs 30,000-35,000 per month as language interpreters and translators in MNCs.

"We have got a large number of enrolments in Italian language course followed by Spanish for the forthcoming academic year. Even though we have 25 seats allotted for each language, we have overshot admissions for these two.

And it is no more a popular course only among the low percenters as most of the applicants have scored 90 and above in the Class XII exams," said Satvir Solanki, an official at the department of Germanic and Romance Studies (GRS), DU, which also offers BA (H) courses in French and German, which are comparatively less popular among the admission-seekers.

He added: "Students in BA (H) in Italian are getting pricey offers as the highest pay package of Rs 4.78 per annum has been offered by Wipro this year and similar offers from other reputed IT firms like Infosys and HP with a salary package of Rs 3.8-4.2 lakh per annum for these two languages have flooded the department."

Even though the East-Asian language have not scored over the two European ones the popularity of Japanese is no less in campus as handsome packages for the posts of junior executives and translators are in plenty for students pursuing it.

"The highest offer was Rs 35,000 per month from Golman Sachs to a student pursuing the Japanese language, this year. Even IT firms like Oracle, Satyam, TCS and companies who deal in finance like American Express have also come up with good offers," said Rajiv Ranjan, senior lecturer and placement co-ordinator, department of East Asian Studies, DU.

The department, though, doesn't offer three-year BA (H) in foreign languages but conducts part-time courses. "Our students are mostly BA or B Com or IT graduates who like to pursue an additional diploma in foreign language.

Thus the companies also look at the dual degrees while hiring them," Ranjan added. Besides a white collar job in the MNCs, such students are also working as tourist guides and the income here is no less.

"Travel agents contact us guiding foreigners. We get around Rs 1,000 per day for a group of five while it is Rs 1,500-2,000 per day for a bigger group.

For a trip to Agra or Jaipur, we charge around Rs 2,500 per day," said Jatin Kapur , a second-year student in Chinese language.