Getting a Linguistics Job outside of Academia
Chilin Shih
February 18, 2016 UIUC Linguistics

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 There are more:
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Many industrial jobs are not advertised on
Linguist List
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Some advertise on linkedin.com,
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Many companies are hiring when a good candidate turns up. They don't necessarily recruit by posting job ads

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Computational linguistics
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Speech technologies
 Google, Apple, Amazon, IBM, AT&T, Nuance …
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Translation
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Language teaching
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Language testing
 ETS, Pearson …
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Data mining
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Dialog system
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Advertising, and many others

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Amazon
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Apple
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ETS
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Facebook
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Google
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IBM
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Microsoft
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Nuance
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Oracle
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Youtube

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Computational linguistics:
 Text analysis, parsing, morphological analysis, information retrieval (IR), machine translation (MT), document analysis, document classification, character recognition (OCR), name pronunciation
…
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Speech technologies:
 Speech recognition (ASR), Text-to-speech synthesis (TTS), language/speaker identification, name pronunciation
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Language testing:
 Automatic scoring of speech fluency and essay

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Computational linguistics:
 Text analysis, parsing, morphological analysis, information retrieval (IR), machine translation (MT), document analysis, document classification, character recognition (OCR), name pronunciation
…
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Speech technologies:
 Speech recognition (ASR), Text-to-speech synthesis (TTS), language/speaker identification, name pronunciation
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Language testing:
 Automatic scoring of speech fluency and essay

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In the industry, you are typically THE linguist on the team, and you are the expert on
 Languages
 Syntax, Semantics
 Phonetic, Phonology, Acoustics
 Social linguistics
 Language variation
 Historical linguistics
 Discourse
 Pragmatics

Google has Google Voice
Apple has Siri
AT&T has Watson
IBM also has Watson
Amazon has Echo
Facebook tested it in Messenger a year ago
They are all perfecting it and building for more and more languages —creating many job opportunities for linguists

All companies want to grow from local to global market. When a product involves languages, it means adapting to all of the local languages and cultures.
In today's Linguist List jobs:
Amazon: Japanese, German
Artificial Solutions (talk to your devices in natural lang): Spainish, German
Lionbridge (translation): Danish, French, Hebrew,
Chinese, Mandarin, Wu, Dutch, Portuguese,
Russian, Turkish, Korean
Adecco (recruiter listing TTS jobs): Malay,

Two Amazon jobs were announced on the Linguist
List yesterday (2/17)
(1) General Linguistics
(2) Computational linguistics; discourse analysis; phonetics; semantics; sociolinguistics; English;
Japanese
Amazon is building Amazon Echo – a wireless voice command device with speech recognition, speech synthesis and dialogue system, hence all the listed linguistic fields.

(1) Data specialist: Comp Ling, Discourse analysis, phonetics, semantics, sociolinguistics
MA or PhD in linguistics, sociolinguistics, computational linguistics, or human-computer interaction.
Work with language modelers and speech scientists as well as data analysts to provide analysis of speech interactions with Amazon devices.
(2) Data specialist; General Linguistics
Condense complex and ambiguous concepts into clear, straightforward conventions materials
Having an eye for process improvement

(1) Speech data evaluator
– Developing rules for a text normalization system
– Large scale data mining
– Customizing language building tools for your language
– Text-to-Speech quality evaluation and testing
(2) Manager
– Creating verbalization rules , such as expanding
URLs, email addresses, numbers
– Creating annotation conventions

Language engineer
Implementation of dialog flows and grammar (with customer)
Test dialog in development environment and on the infotainment system
Evaluating system, analysis of tickets , provide bug fixing
Localization

The more a company considers language diversity in the design and implementation of a language-based technology, the easier it is to do rapid localization.

Analysis of tickets?
Fixing bugs?
Why Industry Needs Linguists
Case I

When speech recognition was just robust enough to get out of research and into the market place, one of the first applications is pay by phone
(There was a time before smart phones)

Please say your credit card number and pin

Problems!
Many transactions were not completed.
No payment? No business.
Go look at the costumer log/tickets.

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Five four one two seven five one two one two three four four three two one ten
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Five five two nine four two zero three five six seven eight five six five six ten
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Four three two one five five three one one two three four one two three four ten

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Aha! Pin-pen merger!(social linguistics knowledge kicked in)
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Aha! Telephone speech! Possible p/t confusion (acoustics knowledge kicked in)
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Ten = Pin

Problem: Some people heard
Please say your credit card number and ten
Solution: Change the prompt to
Please say your credit card number and personal identification number

Why Industry Needs Linguists
Case II

Names
Brand Names

“Just how important is a name? My simple answer to this is, nothing will be used for a longer period of time or more often than a company’s name.
It’s not just a creative exercise.
It’s a strategic one.”
- David Placek, The
Globe And Mail,
Pentium
BlackBerry
PowerBook
Zune
Swifter
Subaru Outback
DeskJet
Dasani

Applying linguistic analysis to brand names:
Lexicon (of course)
Semantics
Imagery
(Universal) Sound symbolism
History
Cross-cultural interpretations
...

Courses
All areas of linguistics
Computational Linguistics
(Big) Data analysis
Language technologies
Mindset
Enjoy your work
Develop linguistic awareness in all areas
Attune to the need of the society, company, application
Find your niche
Provide value
Enjoy more

Many companies don't advertise jobs. Wouldn't it be nice if they contact you.
That may happen if you say or write the right thing at the right time in the right place.
Build credential (beyond your linguistic specialty):
• Know the companies, technologies and applications that interest you
• Analyze designs, problems and solutions
• Make a hobby collecting linguistic patterns
Build network:
• Go to conferences
• Join relevant professional social networks
Visit companies