Students urged to consider a career in localisation

24 Jan 2012

The Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL) consortium has produced a guide urging secondary students to consider taking up a language and technology in college for a career in the localisation sector.

The new guide is a result of academia-industry research from the CNGL consortium which is comprised of four Irish universities, Irish-based multinationals, including IBM and Microsoft, and SMEs such as Alchemy Software Development and VistaTEC. It hopes to educate students, teachers, guidance counsellors and parents on the localisation sector to help continue its growth.

The guide highlights the range of careers in the sector and includes profiles of individuals who have graduated from Irish universities in a range of disciplines who now work in the localisation industry. It also lists courses around computing, languages and business to provide a foundation for the area.

“At present, there are approximately 16,000 people working directly in the localisation sector in Ireland,” said Dr Páraic Sheridan, associate director at CNGL.

“Localisation is critical to so many industries, including software, games, financial services and medical devices, in bringing their products to foreign markets, so it really is vital to Ireland’s export-led recovery.

“It is also an area where Ireland is widely recognised as a world leader in innovation and sees continued growth in jobs, not just in traditional product and service localisation but also in the areas of global multilingual customer care and support,” he said.

Minister for Research and Innovation Sean Sherlock spoke at the launch of the guide, pointing out that localisation is a growth area in Ireland with opportunities for future graduates to build a career in this field.

“Many of the world’s largest software and web companies co-ordinate their localisation activities in Ireland and the sector contributes an estimated €680m annually to the Irish economy,” said Sherlock.

“It is imperative that we highlight the opportunities available to our young people in this sector. We need to encourage and foster their development to ensure that we are teaching the right skills at third level so employers who are already here, or who are considering a presence here, have a strong supply of high-calibre graduates to help them grow their businesses,” he said.

CNGL’s localisation careers guide is being distributed to all secondary schools in Ireland this week. It can also be downloaded from CNGL’s website.

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