These simple tips will help you to improve your CV and win more translation projects,

1. BEING A TRANSLATOR
Tips to successful CV
http://www.translink.com.ru office@translink.com.ru Skype: translink.com.ru
5 DOs AND 5 DON’Ts OF A GOOD CV FOR FREELANCE TRANSLATOR
Have you ever thought what makes a job provider take a decision and choose this or that
translator? Is it about experience? Or is it about rates? Or maybe it is about the style of
presentation? There is no doubt that all of these matters, but speaking as an agency owner, I can
say that the first step to agency’s heart lies in creating a good-looking professional CV. I am not
going to present here a guide to CV writing. There are a lot of resources on this topic. The one I
prefer is Marta Stelmaszac’s guide to CV that works.
My purpose is to briefly state the most important things and the most common mistakes here.
Follow these simple tips on DOs and DON’Ts in your CV, and you will multiply your chances in
winning another good project.
DOs
1. DO use professional photo in your CV.
It sounds like obvious and simple, but we still get CVs with photos taken on holidays, parties etc.
You must look like a professional. Are you?
2. DO show only relevant information, experience, education, etc.
For example, if you once attended cooking school, there is no need to mention that this information
will be useless for your potential client or agency. Unless it is Jamie Oliver’s cooking school;)
3. DO create separate CV for each field of your expertise.
If you specialize in Business and Marketing translations, that's fine, these fields can coexist in one
CV. But it seems a little bit strange when a translator shows Marketing and, for example, Technical
fields, or Medical and Literary specialization in one CV. In this case, at least, the style and format
of CVs will be different.
4. DO think over a headline.
It must be brief, but informative. Ideally, if it shows your name, language pair, working domain. For
example, John Smith, English to Russian Translator in Business and Legal domains. Use the
same headline when you save and email your CV. Agencies hate it getting CVs named like CV
John Smith, or resume, or CV professional translator. It looks, putting it mildly, a little bit
unprofessional, and it takes time to rename it.
5. DO save your CV in PDF format.
It is the unspoken rule of the industry. First of all, WORD format may look different on different
devices. Secondly, because of incompatibility of MS Office versions, lines or headers may jump,
so, it will not make your CV look good and professional.

2. BEING A TRANSLATOR
Tips to successful CV
http://www.translink.com.ru office@translink.com.ru Skype: translink.com.ru
DON’Ts
1. DON’T show you are a beginner, and you do not have any experience.
2. DON’T send out your CV using mass mails.
Practice individual approach. Your potential client or translation agency will be ‘’surprised’’ to see
that you copied to other dozens of clients or agency.
3. DON’T use your personal mail for job applications.
I mean emails with those funny names like daizygirl@whatever.com or dreamboy@whatever.com.
If you do take your profession seriously, you must think and behave correspondingly. You can use,
for instance, 1and1.com service to register a domain for your email.
4. DON’T show irrelevant information like hobbies, leisure time, marital status, full address, age,
etc.
For a freelancer (as opposite to in-office translator), this information doesn't make sense. Instead
of address you can simply show country you live in. For example, Russia, GMT +4.
5. DON’T use words like Hi, Hello, Hey, How is it going, etc. when sending your CV. I should start
with this point because this point matters the most to my mind. There is an etiquette you must
follow. You can spend hours writing your perfect CV, but in case you ignore business etiquette all
your efforts worth nothing.
Here are examples of how applicants shouldn’t write cover letters.
or
To summarize let’s say that writing a good CV might be a challenging task. You need to think over
so many details. You need to think of who is going to read your CV. You need to imagine what this
person is expecting to see in your CV. You need to think on how to catch this person’s attention
and keep them from switching to another CV in the first 10 seconds. So many details you need to
keep in mind.
But once you find your perfect recipe of a successful CV, positive feedbacks will multiply. And
most important you will stop spending hours applying to job posts and thinking why this time the
agency didn’t choose you again. You will have your loyal clients and will decide yourself what
project to take.

3. BEING A TRANSLATOR
Tips to successful CV
http://www.translink.com.ru office@translink.com.ru Skype: translink.com.ru
Thank you for spending the time to read this article! I hope these tips on what to do and what not
to do will help you to improve your CV and your business. In case you have some more questions
freelance business, please feel free to contact me. I will be glad to help you!
Alena Klimtcova
English to Russian Specialist in Finance, Business and Automotive Translations.
About the author: Alena Klimtcova is a translator and co-owner of TransLink Translation Agency.
Apart from translation and managing activity, she is also involved in volunteer activity with
Translation Without Borders and TED organizations, where she participates as an English to
Russian Translator. In 2014 Alena joined IAPTI association for translators.