We receive about 40 CVs per week from translators looking to join our team of translators. As an estimate, I think we accept just under one application out of every 40. Here is why…
We specialise in legal translation and insurance / reinsurance translation. That’s it. We do this because it means that we can be really, really good in these specific subject areas and, as a result, attract high quality law firm and insurer clients.
Many translators who contact us clearly haven’t read our website or found out anything about what we do. Unfortunately, if a translator specialises in tourism translation or oenology, while those are both excellent topics, we won’t be able to work with them as we just don’t receive work or undertake translation work in those subject areas.
In addition, we often receive applications from translators who claim some or all of the following:
- Native language English. The application then goes on to detail an education, including higher education, received in a country of which English is not the native language. While some of these applications are written incredibly well and the level of English is very high for someone who was not brought up in an English-speaking country, the quality is just not high enough to deal with, for example, complex legal translation work.
- Attnetion to detail. Exactly. The above example of “Public Crevice Interpreting”, while amusing, was pulled out of a CV yesterday and stood glaringly on the page. The applicant in question is an incredibly experienced, highly-educated individual but errors like this make me, as a translation buyer, question the ability to complete an error-free translation – which is what our clients value.
- Expertise in legal translation work. However, when you review the CV in full, it is clear that the applicant has some experience in translating, for example, driving licences for immigration law firms. Again, this is a valuable skill and one which is essential for many translators in obtaining “bread and butter” work. But, in my view, this is not expertise. Expertise comes through post-graduate study, practising as a lawyer before becoming a translator, or extensive exposure to legal translation work over many years.
So my advice would be, check and double check your CV before sending it to a translation company – it is your sales tool and the reason why you would be asked to work on a job in preference to another translator. Don’t overclaim your translation expertise – this will soon be discovered at a reference checking or test stage in any event. Check that your experience is relevant to the translation company you are applying to – if you don’t do legal or insurance translation work, then think carefully before applying to us or any other translation agency specialising in this area. The matching of the right translator to the right job is essential at our end and translators can greatly help themselves and us by engaging in frank discussion of strengths, weaknesses and areas of interest.
We look forward to your application!