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Language seems like a complicating factor here. It's difficult (especially in non-Latinate cases) to learn self-directed, and people who are fluent and willing to work in the field can actually do quite well traveling and translating for businesses and government agencies.

Of course, all of these numbers are complicated by "salary of graduates" versus "salary of graduates employed in field".

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But it does depend. If the above poster was taking Japanese as his sole Major it is probably not worth it. If he/she is taking it as an addendum to say a Business degree then it is very much worth it.

I guess it depends how you define "worth it." I have a satisfying career but it has nothing to do with my ability in Japanese.

If you're studying Japanese because you think it will make you money it is a bad idea

Less well known languages like Japanese tend to have higher returns on investment than common ones like Spanish. IIRC Spanish has a return on investment of about 3%.

In my experience the Japanese translation market was very crowded and didn't pay well so my first plan went out the window.

I forget if it was Planet Money or Freakonomics, but there was a podcast about the ROI of learning a foreign language and according to the research they cited the only foreign language worth learning from a pure ROI perspective was English.

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