Language professions are amongst the least appreciated & worst rewarded, compared to many others. Why is this?

First of all I agree, language promotes everything basically, from cultural to scientific to holisitc advances. But, I feel a link between consumerism and language profession in today's world. They just want you to read 'Coca-Cola' and that's it, they don't want you to go ahead and read 'The Republic' By Plato.

Language is powerful as it's the base of how human information and communication is conveyed. So not promoting language based professions just mean that consumerism has a greater grip of the society than something which will benefit mankind at large.

I do agree but for the life of me I just cannot understand why! It is a mystery, especially for someone like me who is in awe of anyone who can speak more than their native tongue!!

I believe that is because there is no effective benchmark in the field, and although there is a high demand for language professionals, places where they are needed most are in developing nations, often for NGO based activities, where passion comes before other activities.

the least, technical and engineering science so highlighted these days ,a field which is conducive to advancement of military equipments