My lovely language students/graduates...

My sister's boyfriend (tenuous I know) graduated in Japanese and now works as as analyst at Nomura based in London.

YES THIS IS WHAT I WANT!! lmao I was just checking their website
I guess its safe to apply for some internships on my first year then

Definitely - make sure you are hot on current affairs and such as well as getting as fluent as possible in your languages - they seem to like people to be well informed

That won't be a problem

One quick question; was she a Oxbridge student?

No, he was at Edinburgh (it's my sister's boyfriend, not my sister).

There used to be a popular thread, something like "WHat are you going to do with your language degree" or something. You'll probably find some answers there.

Teaching, translating, interpreting, diplomacy, international relations, development, security, politics, journalism, business, banking, finance, etc. The possibilities are endless if you pick the right language in the right combinations. We've had a couple of firms like Accenture and RBS come talk to languages students saying they were interested in skills we had, there's a profile on the ACCA website of someone who graduate in Languages and English and is now an accountant. A language vlogger graduated from Cambridge in Russian and German and now works in Finance, etc.

If you look at websites like the EU organisations or the UN, they generally require one or two foreign languages (English, obviously, and French is another popular language). For translating and interpreting, there's no point in going for languages like Arabic or Japanese, are they generally prefer natives who've learnt English to do the job. GCHQ and MI5/MI6 are also quite big on language graduates, and you can also become a civil servant with languages. For development, niche languages may be more in use, but it's a field that's becoming popular, and for which you do need to speak foreign languages, although given your choice, I doubt yours will be of any use.

Finally, there's always Law if nothing else interests you, as you can do a Law conversion course after your language undergraduate. Quite a lot of people do that, and if you're interested in international law, then it will give you an advantage compared to someone who doesn't speak a language. A few of my friends who've graduated have gone on to do that. There's also the academic way, where you can do a Masters degree or a PhD is a fair few subjects.

Just make sure you're aware of how much work the languages you've chosen are, and don't expect to master Korean and Japanese after a 4 years course, you'll get to a decent intermediate level at best, after that (B1/B2).

Maybe in the UK its different but in general in the states people with pure language degrees find it very very very hard to get jobs. Its why we are encouraged to do area studies because we get a background in other things. I hear its different in the UK because they don't care about what major you do but what school you are from. BUt if you want a success story I guess I worked at a small chinese run private equity firm for awhile and got a delayed offer from Boston Consulting Group meaning they will hire me if I graduate from LSE with at least Merit and I'm actually in the states right now for a week of interviews from the Big IB firms for their Beijing and HK offices. So I guess that counts for a success.

What's area studies?

And surely if you're wanting to work in most language related jobs having two or more languages is preferable?

The point he is trying to make I think is that languages by themselves are useless and one has to have some sort of qualification in another field.
That makes sense since if you're to translate some text or interpret some speech, you must know what they are about to do your work.
An example would be: could you translate a physics text about thermonuclear dynamics (I made that up but I believe it exists) without even knowing what it is?

The point he is trying to make I think is that languages by themselves are useless and one has to have some sort of qualification in another field.
That makes sense since if you're to translate some text or interpret some speech, you must know what they are about to do your work.
An example would be: could you translate a physics text about thermonuclear dynamics (I made that up but I believe it exists) without even knowing what it is?

I know what you mean but I don't think that applies in a lot of cases. And if you needed to know the technical vocab knowledge required you would surely have to have worked in the field.

I require your help! I'm starting a 4 year language course in September(BA Japanese/ and Korean at SOAS) and although I love languages, the last thing I would like to become is a teacher

Now, I know language students have amazing jobs opportunities outside Teaching/Translating/Interpreting and I'm seriously looking towards a career in Finance/accountancy/banking or maybe diplomacy.

Is there any languages student who has similar career interests? Any successuful stories of language students working in the finance sector here or abroad?

I think some fields you can manage just by looking things up. I'd never translated legal or medicinal texts before my year abroad and didn't really know much about any areas within those fields. Obviously experience is preferable but I don't think it's the be-all-and-end-all.

area studies is ast Asian Studies, Central Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern, Slavic Studies, Latin American etc, a mixture of language, social science, and humanities courses that give u a stronger understanding of the region. The problem with asian languages that if they dont teach a lot of history, a lot of the more advanced metaphors and commonly used phrases will go over a person's head because they don;t understand the background of it.