Foreign languages and the modern engineer

Abstract

Engineers, in the modern world, concern themselves in several ways with ‘communication’. They are aware of the importance of satisfactory communication within a team engaged on a project; they understand the need to maintain communication between themselves as a task-oriented group and the local town or community in which they are working; they deal in a sophisticated manner with communication in the sense of the efficient transfer of information throughout complex systems; some of them work in communications engineering, a special and reflexive case of concern for communication. Yet engineers of all kinds as individuals are surprised and frustrated when they discover that practical communication on the job is prevented by a language barrier: inability to handle a foreign language. The purpose of this article is to assure all engineers that, in the present age, this barrier can be overcome. Any engineer can learn any language.