ARmy Rumour SErvice

It *used* to be the case that there was a small cash grant for passing (then) Civil Service Commission examinations at Colloquial, Linguist or Interpreter grades. The responsibility for administering the tests was passed to the Institute of Linguists, as far as I recall and now it's someone else. Whether they still pay the small cash grant, dunno, guv. Wouldn't have thought so, unless it was for a language specifically required for a post.

Extra pay only for target languages. Burlesqueconi was a twat but we haven't declared war on Italy yet!

There are exams in a number of foreign languages but MOD will normally only accept you as a sponsored candidate if you are posted to a job where ability in the target language is part of the job specification, for example as an exchange officer. In that case, on successful completion of the exam, you get a small one-off cash bonus but no "extra pay". If you aren't a sponsored candidate, MOD will often let you take the exams anyway, as long as there's an exam planned - they won't stage an exam especially for you and you won't get any cash grant. Please note that the way the language is tested requires some practice too - at the higher levels especially, a lot boils down to exam technique!

However, thinking a bit more broadly... If you can reach SLP 4 (which as a bilingual person you will once you've learned the exam techniques) you can qualify for entrance to the MOD-sponsored MA in Inernational Liaison and Communication and pay for it with your ELCs - worth thinking about.

If you want any more information, feel free to pm me...

I once got a small cash reward for passing a colloquial French test. I think it was about £50 but it could have been a bit more or less, it was a while back. It wasnt enough though to compensate me for the self-loathing brought on by speaking cheese-eating-surrender-monkey in front of two complete strangers.

Originally Posted by Mr_Snakey

I was recently told that there are army exams in foreign languages. The person who told me this is not an expert however.

She (RAF) seemed to think that I could bag some extra pay for being bilingual (Italian).

Whilst the thought of extra pay disgusts and reviles me, (I don't do it for the money, no way matey, what do you think I am a mercenary?) I would like to know if this is correct please.


And just for my own, err, personal knowledge, how might one claim the pay?

if you search for the DIN on Intranet (or indeed on this forum).

It tends to be for opertional languages; so it was (from memory) Chinese (Mandarin), Arabic, Farsi, Pushto, Dari, Urdu, Somali, Russian.

That's just from memory.

It has been asked before in this parish, a quick search will turn it up.

so my degree in Klingon was a waste of time...?

I know of two people who have (within the last 18 months) sat Italian exams. They would have collected a small payout for gaining the qualifications.

They were caught out though, as there exams required them to know some pretty specific vocabulary with regards to the internal workings of a car engine. So considering yourself bilingual is a stretch unless you truly are.

Mr. Snakey,

You want to ask about Defence Operational Language Award Scheme (DOLAS) run by the Defence Operational Language Support Unit (DOLSU) - not sure what the DIN is off-hand. You can fill out a form on JPA (I think, I did it on my PSI's work terminal) and your unit should send it off. You specify your language on the form and then DOLSU take it from there. As far as I'm aware, they will bring you in for testing to register your skills regardless of whether Italian is on the operational language list. I couldn't tell you precisely if you get any sort of award for Italian, but it definitely couldn't hurt officially recording your language ability.