Translating Heritage into Professional Practice: Bilingual Storytelling and Career Formation and Future Economies in Saudi Humanities Education

Abstract

Saudi humanities education faces a consequential question: how can students develop professional opportunities through cultural work without reducing inherited knowledge to marketable content? This conceptual article proposes a curriculum centred on bilingual heritage storytelling, understood as the researched, ethically accountable interpretation of cultural practices for Arabic and English audiences. It brings graduate employability scholarship into dialogue with heritage studies and intercultural education, then develops a teaching model organised around source inquiry, narrative interpretation, translation, collaborative production and portfolio presentation. The argument distinguishes language proficiency from the capacity to explain cultural meaning, and distinguishes employability from employment secured. Illustrative assignments show how students might produce exhibition narratives, audio scripts and interpretive texts while documenting uncertainty, attribution and community participation. These examples are proposed teaching applications, not findings from an implemented intervention. The article argues that professional preparation becomes educationally defensible when cultural accountability forms part of assessment and when universities provide equitable access to supervised practice. It concludes with an evaluation agenda addressing learning gains, community judgement, portfolio credibility and subsequent career experiences. Bilingual storytelling offers a productive meeting point between disciplinary study and public practice, provided that heritage bearers retain meaningful influence over how their knowledge circulates.