Part 2: Experience
Preliminaries
Part 1 of this series on “A
translator’s CV – a translator’s best friend”
has been published in the July 2005 edition
of ITIA Bulletin is available in
Adobe Acrobat (36kB) at http://www.infomarex.com/articles/articles.htm
Part 1 has produced a considerable
number of eMails which the author has saved
and will compile with any others which arrive.
The author will reply in general lines at
the end of the series.
Most of the comments raised
so far fall into one of three categories:
- a misunderstanding as to the purpose and
aim of a CV;
- cultural, national or stylistic differences;
- simple errors of fact.
Experience:
Many persons writing a CV
for the first time will fall into the simple
trap of continuing from the section on their
personal details – as covered in Part 1 -
and proceed to give details of their education.
This is particularly the case
of those coming out of language school, college
or university and whose actual outside-of-classroom
experience is a bit thin on the ground.
The simple way over this problem
is to list at this point your language skills,
where some extremes are best avoided.
The first extreme to be avoided
is not to list your languages at all in a
CV and, believe it or believe it not, one
in twenty translators and interpreters overlook
to mention their languages.
The second extreme is to attempt
to give oneself some form of points system,
e.g. Spanish (10 or excellent), English
(9 or very good), etc., even if extracted
from an academic record.
A third error to be avoid
is to list your languages either alphabetically
or in a string, e.g. Spanish, English,
French, Catalan, etc., where the
client might suspect that the first listed
language is a mother-tongue, but such is not
clear in this instance.
Language pairs:
English, French to Spanish
| Mother-tongue |
Spanish |
| Fluent |
English, French |
| Read/written |
Catalan, Italian |
| Read |
Portuguese, Latin |
The above or similar layout
will clearly show to a client or agency that
a main document could be sent in English or
French, with perhaps footnotes or annotations
in Catalan or Italian and that the translator
would be able to handle these competently.
A client, however, would be at risk if a full
document in e.g. Catalan or Italian
were to be sent for translation to Spanish
as the professional competence in a total
familiarity with the source language(s) would
not be there.
Experience proper should be
listed in the following ways. Your experience
should start with your present or most recent
job and work backwards,
June 2003 to present:
Important Co. Ltd., London – In-house translator
– English to Spanish Business correspondence,
contracts, etc.
January 2001 to May 2003:
Petite Compagnie S.A., Geneva – In-house translator
– French to Spanish Two business manuals –
17 month contract.
Ma non troppo...
There is no need to give
the full address or contact details of the
previous employer, nor to break any confidence
that about the nature of the correspondence
or even the titles of the manuals. It suffices
to show in what languages you were working
and for how long. Itemisation of the workload
is counter-productive and a future client
might well think ‘If so much detail is being
revealed about previous clients, will the
same amount of detail be revealed about us
at some point in the future?’
Walking encyclopaedias
Few translators realise that
they can be walking encyclopaedias and sources
of great knowledge about the clients and companies
for whom they work. Simple business correspondence
between client and supplier on nondeliveries,
details of slow client payments, contract
documents on a proposed takeover, patents,
contracts of employment listing key shareholdings,
exit parachutes or golden handshakes are but
a few areas to mention. The translator not
only knows about all of this. He/she knows
it in two languages with the nuances of every
comma and colon!
The translator in his/her
CV must show knowledge [with restraint], experience
[in summary] and discretion [in abundance].
However, having said all that
which might make it seem that the life of
the translator on the inside track of things
is exciting, it is also tediously boring as
anyone who has ever translated a two hundred
page takeover document will attest, where
after the third “aforementioned”
and the sixth “subject to paragraph 5,
sub-section 4” intellectual curiosity
grinds to a halt and professionalism hunches
its shoulders at work over the keyboard.
No-no’s
The section of your CV dealing
with experience should not show gaps. If between
clients, you have gone back to school/college/university,
a line should read: See Education.
If it has been a genuine
gap year(s), a line should read, e.g.
Jan 2003 – Dec 2003 Round the world trip –
ten countries.
Jan 2005 – May 2005 Aid-relief worker – South-east
Asia
It does avoid awkward questions
which may not be allowed in your culture or
country, e.g. “Were you sick? Hospitalised?
In jail?” and it shows unbroken continuity
and reliability. It also allows the client
or company enquire about this, if appropriate,
or if the CV is being presented as part of
an interview process for an in-house position,
it is an opportunity for the translator to
show another interesting side to his/her personality
which may have little to do with translation,
but a lot to do with outlook and attitude.
Comments
