Johnson: What is a foreign language worth?

学习外语价值何在?

JOHNSON is a fan of the Freakonomics books and columns. But this week’s podcast makes me wonder if the team of Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt aren’t overstretching themselves a bit. “Is learning a foreign language really worth it?”， asks the headline. A reader writes:

约翰逊是一个《魔鬼经济学》这本书和专栏粉丝，但是这周斯蒂芬·杜布纳和史蒂芬·莱维特却让我感觉是不是他们探索的有些太深了。 “学外语到底价值几何?”头版标题向读者提问。一位读者答道：

My oldest daughter is a college freshman, and not only have I paid for her to study Spanish for the last four or more years — they even do it in grade school now! — but her college is requiring her to study EVEN MORE! What on earth is going on? How did it ever get this far? … Or to put it in economics terms, where is the ROI?

“我的大女儿读大一，我出钱让她学了四年多的西班牙语，但是现在很多孩子从小学就开始学了!在大学，我女儿的西语学习任务更加繁重，这到底是怎么一回事?为什么会发展到这种地步?或者换一种方式，用经济学用语来说，投资回收率是多少?

To sum up the podcast’s answers, there are pros and cons to language-learning. The pros are that working in a foreign language can make people make better decisions (research Johnson covered here) and that bilingualism helps with executive function in children and dementia in older people (covered here). The cons: one study finds that the earnings bonus for an American who learns a foreign language is just 2%. If you make $30,000 a year, sniffs Mr Dubner, that’s just $600.

简单地把播客上的回答做个总结，对于语言学习有人赞同有人反对。赞同者们认为学习外语能让人们有更好的选择，双语学习可以让孩子能力更强，减少老年人痴呆的风险。反对者们则认为：懂一门外语的美国人只比普通美国人多挣2%的工资而已。杜伯纳先生对此嗤之以鼻，如果你一年挣3万美元，也就多了600美元而已。

But for the sake of provocation, Mr Dubner seems to have low-balled this. He should know the power of lifetime earnings and compound interest. First, instead of $30,000, assume a university graduate, who in America is likelier to use a foreign language than someone without university. The average starting salary is almost $45,000.

对于这种说法，杜伯纳先生对此似乎有些低估了。会一种语言是终身性的，而且还要考虑到复利(会不断地给我们带来利润)。首先，除去3万美元的工资不说，如果一名大学生会外语，那么他的起薪平均可以达到4.5万美元。

Imagine that our graduate saves her “language bonus”. Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe (a statement dubiously attributed to Einstein, but nonetheless worth committing to memory). Assuming just a 1% real salary increase per year and a 2% average real return over 40 years, a 2% language bonus turns into an extra $67,000 (at 2014 value) in your retirement account. Not bad for a few years of “où est la plume de ma tante?”

想象一下吧，我们的毕业生有着“语言红利”。爱因斯坦说过，复利是大学最大的动力(不确定这个理论是不是爱因斯坦提出的，但是值得我们记住)。假设每年都会有1%的涨薪，2%的实际回报率，连续40年。在你退休之后，2%的语言奖金就会变成6.7万美元充进你的退休账户(按2014的比率来计算)。所以，学几年西语“où est la plume de ma tante?”(中文：我姨妈的钢笔去哪了?)也不赖吧!

Second, Albert Saiz, the MIT economist who calculated the 2% premium, found quite different premiums for different languages: just 1.5% for Spanish, 2.3% for French and 3.8% for German. This translates into big differences in the language account: your Spanish is worth $51,000, but French, $77,000, and German, $128,000. Humans are famously bad at weighting the future against the present, but if you dangled even a post-dated $128,000 cheque in front of the average 14-year-old, Goethe and Schiller would be hotter than Facebook。

第二，麻省理工的经济学家阿尔伯特·塞兹(Albert Saiz)，在计算出第二外语可以带给我们2%的额外收益之外，还发现不同的语言额外收益是不同的：西班牙语仅1.5%，法语2.3%，德语3.8%。换算成钱，这份语言账单上就会产生很大差异：西班牙语值5.1万美元，法语值7.7万美元，德语12.8万美元。人类极不擅于权衡未来与现在是出了名的，但如果把一张12.8万美元的支票在一般的14岁小孩面前晃一晃，歌德和席勒将会比脸谱网更受欢迎。

Why do the languages offer such different returns? It has nothing to do with the inherent qualities of Spanish, of course. The obvious answer is the interplay of supply and demand. This chart reckons that Spanish-speakers account for a bit more of world GDP than German-speakers do. But an important factor is economic openness. Germany is a trade powerhouse, so its language will be more economically valuable for an outsider than the language of a relatively more closed economy。

为什么不同法语言种类会有这样不同的收益呢?当然这与西班牙语本身没有关系。毫无疑问这是供需关系相互作用的结果。这个表格说明说西班牙语的人占世界GDP的比例比说德语的人多一点。但一个很重要的因素是经济的开放度。德国是贸易繁荣的国家，所以相比其他闭塞的国家来说，第二语言是德语的人将会有更高的经济回报。

But in American context (the one Mr Saiz studied)， the more important factor is probably supply, not demand, of speakers of a given language. Non-Latino Americans might study Spanish because they hear and see so much of it spoken in their country. But that might be the best reason not to study the language, from a purely economic point of view。

A non-native learner of Spanish will have a hard time competing with a fluent native bilingual for a job requiring both languages. Indeed, Mr Saiz found worse returns for Spanish study in states with a larger share of Hispanics. Better to learn a language in high demand, but short supply—one reason, no doubt, ambitious American parents are steering their children towards Mandarin. The drop-off in recent years in the American study of German might be another reason for young people to hit the Bücher。

但美国的情况(塞兹先生的研究的对象)，对特定语言来说更重要的可能是供应而非需求。非拉丁美洲的美国人可能会学西班牙语，因为他们在本国听到看到太多的人使用西班牙语。但从纯粹的经济学角度来说，那也许会成为不学习这种语言的最好理由。在求职中一个母语非西班牙语的学习者与流利使用本国语的双语人才竞争，胜算并不大。确实，塞兹先生发现一位西语学习者在西班牙裔聚集地似乎占不到什么便宜。最好学一门高需求的语言，但低供应的语言，有野心的美国父母正引导孩子学习汉语普通话。近年来美国学习德语的人越来越少，这也导致了年轻人越来越少读德语书。

And studies like Mr Saiz’s can only work with the economy the researchers have at hand to study. But of course changes in educational structures can have dynamic effects on entire economies. A list of the richest countries in the world is dominated by open, trade-driven economies. Oil economies aside, the top 10 includes countries where trilingualism is typical, like Luxembourg, Switzerland and Singapore, and small countries like the Scandinavian ones, where English knowledge is excellent。

塞兹先生这样的研究只适用于研究者周围的经济状况。但当然教育结构的变化对整个经济体系有着动态的影响。世界上最富有的国家都是开放、贸易驱动型的经济体。除了石油经济体，排名前十的一些国家，人们普遍说三种语言，像卢森堡、瑞士、新加坡，还有些小国家像斯堪的纳维亚国家，那里人们的英语水平很高。

There are of course many reasons that such countries are rich. But a willingness to learn about export markets, and their languages, is a plausible candidate. One study, led byJames Foreman-Peck of Cardiff Business School, has estimated that lack of foreign-language proficiency in Britain costs the economy £48 billion ($80 billion)， or 3.5% of GDP, each year. Even if that number is high, the cost of assuming that foreign customers will learn your language, and never bothering to learn theirs, is certainly a lot greater than zero. So if Mr Saiz had run his language-premium study against a parallel-universe America, in which the last half-century had been a golden age of language-learning, he might have found a bigger foreign-language bonus (and a bigger GDP pie to divide) in that more open and export-oriented fantasy America. And of course greater investment in foreign-language teaching would have other dynamic effects: more and better teachers and materials, plus a cultural premium on multilingualism, means more people will actually master a language, rather than wasting several years never getting past la plume de ma tante, as happens in Britain and America。

当然这些国家富有有很多原因。但是愿意学习出口市场和他们的语言，在此有一席之地毋庸置疑。加迪夫商业学院的詹姆斯·福尔曼·佩克领导了一项研究，估算出英国每年因缺少外语专业人才花费了480亿英镑，占GDP3.5%。虽然这个数字巨大，但如果外国客户会学习你的语言，无需劳烦你去学习他们的语言，这种做法会付出更大的代价。所以如果塞兹先生在过去半个世纪语言学习的黄金时代做语言红利研究，并把他现在的研究与平行世界的美国对比，他可能会在那个更为开放、出口导向型的幻境美国发现一个更大外语红利(并且占GDP比重更大)。当然，更多的外语教学投资会带来其他的动态影响：更多更好的教师和材料以及多语言使用带来的文化红利，这意味着更多的人会精通一门语言，而不是浪费多年仍然学不会“我姨妈的钢笔在哪”，就像英国和美国一样。

To be sure, everything has an opportunity cost. An hour spent learning French is an hour spent not learning something else. But it isn’t hard to think of school subjects that provide less return—economically, anyway—than a foreign language. What is the return on investment for history, literature or art? Of course schools are intended to do more than create little GDP-producing machines. (And there are also great non-economic benefits to learning a foreign language。) But if it is GDP you’re after, the world isn’t learning English as fast as some people think. One optimistic estimate is that half the world’s people might speak English by 2050. That leaves billions who will not, and billions of others who remain happier (and more willing to spend money) in their own language。

当然，每件事物都有机会成本。花一小时学法语就是浪费一小时没有学其他技能。但是，很难想到学校里哪个学科比英语经济回报更低。历史、文学或艺术的投资回报是什么?当然学校不只是想创造GDP生产机。(学习外语有许多非经济方面的好处)但如果你追求的是GDP，全球人学英语的速度并不像一些人想的那样快。乐观估计，到2050年世界上可能有一半的人会说英语。还剩下数十亿的人们不会说英语，以及数十亿更快乐地说着(也更愿意投资)自己语言的人。