Exactly-- the place where I went to grad school was pretty old-school, but there was no FORMAL requirement. Still, there were some seminal papers in neuroscience and electrochemistry in particular which had never been translated from German-- and I could read them. It's been handy in pharmacology, as well.

My DH, on the other hand, does not have literacy in anything but English, and in MatSci, it's been fine for him.

Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.