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Tips for a Winning CV

This blog post is part 1 of a series of 6 articles written by Silvia on the topic of writing a CV and a motivation letter.

When writing your Curriculum Vitae, it is essential that you follow these pointers:

LENGTH: A CV should ideally be 2 (A4) pages long.

If you wrote more than that, you probably included too many details or information that is irrelevant. You may have had a hundred jobs, but there are only a few that will interest your prospective employer, and in most cases it is sufficient for them to know where you worked last and what you did there. So be concise.

If you wrote less than that you may have left out some information that could be useful for the employer to know why you would be valuable for the job. Even if it is the first time you are looking for a job there is information about courses you took or even skills or hobbies that could be relevant. Notwithstanding the above, do not include unrelated data that will not be of interest to your employer.

LAYOUT: Keep it simple, clear and professional.

Of course a nice layout will cause a good impression, but it must serve the purpose of a CV. It should not be distractive. Employers browse hundreds of CVs and they want to spot the desired information quickly. Too many colours or different types of font may seem childish and unprofessional.

Clearly discriminate the different contents by dividing your CV in sections. The heading of each section (Work Experience, Qualifications, Interests, etc) may be highlighted by the use of bold (better than underlining).

CONTENTS: Contact information, Qualifications, Experience.

You may want to include many different things in your CV that will depict your personality and skills, but employers will read only certain information that is key. If at a first glance they see you count with the desirable qualities they will contact you to arrange an interview to get to know you better.

The essential information you have to include is: your contact details (which should be at the top of the front page), your work experience and your qualifications.

Contact information: Include your Full Name (if not clear which is your surname use upper case), address, telephone (including area code) and mobile number.

Qualifications: Include the relevant information for the job. What school you attended may not be important in most of the cases, but stating the name of the University is. If you are looking for a job in a foreign country, where the name of the University is not familiar, a good idea is to include the web page. Include dates, degree and grades if applicable. Do not include unfinished courses from which you dropped out. However it may be relevant to mention courses which you are taking at the moment of sending your CV.

Experience: Include only the relevant information. If you are applying for a job as a receptionist they will probably not care about the fact that you worked as a babysitter ten years ago, even though you believe it is a good personal reference. Nevertheless, do not leave gaps as they may find this strange and suspicious.

Optional contents: Photo*, marital status, Children. In many countries it is forbidden to request this information due to the possibility of discrimination. They may ask you in an interview if you will be willing to travel often, but they cannot ask about your marital status or whether you have children. If you are working in a foreign country you have to include the type of visa you have. And in some types of jobs (for example Nannies) it is better that you state if you have a driving license.
*This is a strong regional variant. For example, you will almost never see a candidate include his or her picture in a CV targeting the Quebec market, but a photo is often present in a CV targeting the France job market.

ORDER OF CONTENTS: Customized.

Once you have decided what information to include in your CV you must plan the order in which it will appear.

Your contact information should always be at the top of the first page, so it is easy for the employer to contact you and also because your name will be more memorable if it stands out at the top.

Qualifications and Experience should follow your contact information, but which to include first will depend on the job you are applying for and on your experience. The order should follow the principle of “the most important first”. If you have just finished your studies it is preferable that you list your qualifications first and in more detail. If you have worked in the same field of the job you are applying for, it is best to list your working experience, always starting by the most recent position.

All the rest of the information, if any, should be at the end. For example Interests and Achievements, which may be relevant in some cases but most of the time will only give “extra” information.

LANGUAGE: Should be formal, succinct, effective.

You are not writing a letter to a friend. The register of your CV must be formal.

Avoid contractions.

Write in third person instead of using “I”, or explain your experience from an objective point of view. Instead of “I was in charge of training the new staff so I learnt to be more proactive and responsible” explain it as “The position involved training the new employees, which demanded excellent managerial skills and responsibility”

Try to use action verbs which will attract the attention of the reader.

EDIT, EDIT, EDIT: Grammar and Spelling must be flawless.

A grammatical or spelling mistake in your CV can be disastrous. You will be immediately considered sloppy, which will have detrimental effects on your chances of getting an interview no matter the field. So, once it is finished, even when you were very careful while writing it, do take some time to read it with the only purpose of spotting mistakes.

If you have the chance, ask another person to read it, specially if you are writing your CV in a foreign language.

The opinion of a native will also be useful regarding the format of the CV. Even thought the pointers mentioned in this article are universal, there may be slight differences depending on the culture.

All the effort will have a reward. Remember that your CV is your first contact with the person in charge of appointing someone for your dream job, and as someone said, “you never have a second chance to make a first impression”.

In the second part, we talk about adapting your CV. according to the job you’re applying for.

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Vancouver’s Olympic Games to be Bilingual

Thanks to New Brunswick that is. New Brunswick’s Government announced earlier this month that they will help with the translation from English into French of all the Vancouver 2010 Games documents. They pledged $60,000 to a non-profit group, Sport New Brunswick, to provide with the translation.

One would think that Quebec would have been a more logical province to come forward with such an offer. Still, New Brunswick (Nouveau-Brunswick in French) is actually the only bilingual province in Canada per their constitution. Quebec, for its part, is the only Canadian province whose (sole) official language is French. Canada has two official languages, English and French of course, so it makes a lot of sense for the Games to be bilingual.

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Toshiba Develops a Trilingual Translation System for Mobile Phones

A story from PC World announces that Toshiba has developed a cell phone version of their PC translation system which translate between Chinese, English and Japanese.

The software uses a speech recognition method that uses one of two systems: statistical machine translation or rule-based machine translation. According to the article, tests provided fairly good results, although they state that the system is prone to misidentify some words, which in turn causes bad translations.

You can read the full article here.

As we wrote before, we’re not big fan of machine translations here; however, we do applaud the technical advances that have been made in the past years in this field. Google, for instance, is pouring a lot of energy in their Google Translate feature, and it seems that with technological advances coming from every corner of the world, accurate machine based translations could be something of a not so distant future.

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Translationparty.com – The wonders of Google Translate

I just read about this site on TechCrunch. The idea is very simple; you type a phrase in English, and Translation Party uses Google Translate to translate it in Japanese, and then re-use Google Translate to translate it back in English, and so forth until it reaches an equilibrium – a point where translating back and forth will always lead to the same translation.

Translationparty.com

Watch out, it gets addictive!

Latin American and European Spanish, Non-Identical Twins

With connectivity between all parts of the world growing at an incredible rate, the language barrier between people increases as well. While the people of certain areas may speak the same language, it is the dialects and regional twists that create issues, especially with languages that are speaking by a great number of people throughout a large area. The perfect example of this is Spanish, which can be broken down into two main dialects.

Spanish is the second most natively spoken language in the world, following Mandarin Chinese. While obviously spoken in Spain, it is also the native language of most Central and South American countries. Spanish is a Romance Language, derived from Latin and closely related to the other languages of Spain’s Western European neighbors, like Italian and French.

European Spanish as we know it today found its roots in the 1200’s. While the language had existed for a long time before that, it was in this period that King Alfonzo X chose his dialect as the language of Spain. His dialect, the Castilian dialect of Toledo, became the written and spoken European Spanish as it is known worldwide today. Later on, explorers traveling to the “New World,” the Americas, introduced Spanish to the native people they encountered.

The explorers in the Americas had no way of communicating with the native people. As time went the natives began to understand Spanish, with the explorers using captives as interpreters for those who did not understand. Following closely behind the Spanish explorers was the Catholic Church. Missionaries to Central and South America created schools for children and teens, teaching in only Spanish. This caused the language to penetrate into the cultures. As Spanish gained more and more of a foothold on the Americas, native languages began to fade away. As Spanish became the dominant language, the native tongues had a minor influence, helping to create the variants found all over South America, leading to the different variations of Latin American Spanish found in various countries.

While those who speak Latin American Spanish can understand those speaking European Spanish and vice versa, there is a major grammatical difference between the two. The most glaring difference is that the plural second person, “vosotros,” does not exist in Latin American Spanish. There is no usage of the pronoun form, which translate to “you all,” or the verb forms. Instead, “ustedes” is used. “Ustedes” is the polite form of “you.” Those who are fluent in the language can understand either variant. This understanding has been aided even further through the media as well as the education system. While the variants are understood by many, if not all, Spanish speakers, it is easy to tell the difference, as well as the origination of the variant.

The differences between Latin American Spanish and European Spanish pose a challenge when we must select our target audiences. For a specific narrow market, the most successful translations cater to the audience, using the variant of the locale. For attempting to communicate with a large number of Spanish speaking people, this leaves a decision to make as to which variant to use with the trade offs involved.

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The differences between Simplified and Traditional Chinese Writings

Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese are similar written language in that they have a very similar grammatical structure, though they are considered to be completely separate due to their slight variations. The main variance between Simplified and Traditional Chinese is that they are written using different characters; one being highly intricate and difficult and the other being a simplified version with less complicated characters.

Chinese written characters consist of two parts. The first part is the signific which is the actual word, and the second part is the phonetic which is the sound associated with the word. While Traditional Chinese is composed of complex ideographs made up of many strokes, Simplified Chinese offers a reduction of the number of strokes used per signific, as well as a reduction in the number of overall characters in use.

Simplified Chinese was created after the end of the civil war which resulted in the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. It was designed by the government as a way of promoting literacy among the citizens of China. The idea was that with a simplified writing system, it would be easier for more people to become literate, leading to better education of the general population. In order to effectively simplify the writing system, the characters of Chinese writing were made less intricate and easier to write. Over time Simplified Chinese was adopted throughout the country, except for Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Traditional Chinese is the written language used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and various other areas of China. Traditional Chinese is the writing that has been used in China for thousands of years and the characters are extremely intricate in their design. The characters of Traditional Chinese require a significant amount of pen strokes to create. A big part of the reason that Simplified Chinese text was never adopted in these areas was their political separation from mainland China.

Though Simplified and Traditional Chinese have the same grammatical structure, most who know one style cannot understand the other. The variations in the ideographs between the two styles are enough to make it seem as though they are two completely separate languages, thus creating a true language barrier between the two.

There are two main dialects in China, Mandarin and Cantonese. While the two dialects are closely related to writing style, they are not indicative of each other. Simplified Chinese does not translate into one dialect, nor does Traditional Chinese translate into another. Mandarin is spoken throughout most of China, while Cantonese is spoken in the Guangdong province in Hong Kong. Guangdong was the earliest area of China to begin trade with the West, and this interaction with foreigners helped form the Cantonese dialect.

The connection between dialect and writing style is actually very minor, but very important. Depending on the area, different dialects match up with different areas for translation. Since Mandarin is used in Mainland China, as well as Simplified Chinese writing, any writings translated for the mainland would have to be in Simplified Chinese in the Mandarin dialect. Taiwan is similar in that it uses Mandarin dialect, but writings would be in Traditional Chinese. Hong Kong differs since the Cantonese dialect formed there. Writings would be in Traditional Chinese, but in the Cantonese dialect.


Ashley Augello is a freelance writer and Public Relations professional. She graduated from Villanova University in 2007 with her Bachelor’s Degree in Communication. Ashley can be reached at ashley.augello@gmail.com.

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The SEO Aspect of Country-Specific Domain Extensions

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a familiar term to almost anyone who owns and operates a website – especially a website that is used for business. This is what puts your business in front of internet users and what keeps bringing in new customers; however, some website owners make the mistake of only focusing on Meta tags and keywords during their SEO efforts. On the contrary, there are actually many aspects of Search Engine Optimization that should be considered when one is marketing a website. One such important, and often overlooked, consideration is a country-specific top-level domain extension.

Why These Extensions Make For Good Business

When you are trying to attract an international audience, a good way to do so is to translate your website into (at least) a few of the most often used foreign languages around the globe. But in order to attract as many international customers as possible, you need to take this strategy a step further by attaching the translated website to a URL containing a country-specific top-level domain, a TLD, extension.

Consider this: Each country has a customized form of Google just for them, such as www.google.co.uk for internet users in the United Kingdom. As expected, many internet users from foreign countries, especially those not fluent in English, are likely to utilize the Google search engine specific to their country (as opposed to the one found at good ‘ole www.google.com). This is for two reasons:

  1. These country-specific search engines are more likely to feature websites written in a user’s native language. This means that internet users in a non-English speaking country won’t have to wade through a bunch of English-based websites just to find what they are looking for, in a language that they can easily understand.
  2. They can find relevant content, which is targeted directly at them, and nearby merchandise vendors with greater ease. Many times those of us from English-speaking countries can forget how alienated non-English speakers can feel when searching a World Wide Web of English-based content. It can be a much friendlier place when all the articles that pop up are in your own language.

The frequent use of these county-specific search engines is just one of the many reasons why using a country-specific top-level domain extension is an essential component to targeting an international audience.

There are also two important SEO-related benefits that you gain from when using this kind of domain extension: these domains will be ranked higher than normal dot-coms in country-specific search engines and the owners of these domains will then have the opportunity to be included in exclusive county-specific website directories.

Ranking Higher in Country-Specific Search Engines

The ability to rank highly in country specific search engines is one of the best methods for growing a large international customer base. Although you can get a normal dot-com name ranked and included in country-specific search engines, you will likely not get the kind of results that you expect. This is because country-specific search engines give greater priority to those websites that use the two-letter top-level domain extension specific to their country, which will produce friendlier search listings for internet users in that country.

Of course, as with any search engine (no matter what language it serves), the higher your website ranks, the more “hits” you are likely to receive. This raises the percentage of interested buyers who will land on your page, which will result in more sales and a higher ROI; all equaling a larger profit for your business. It is also the first step to international brand awareness for your company.

Inclusion in Exclusive Country-Specific Web Directories

Having a country-specific top-level domain extension also gives you the eligibility to be part of exclusive country-specific web directories, where one of the main requirements for inclusion is that you use the two-letter top-level domain name extension specific to that country. Many people in foreign countries choose to use these web directories in place of English-language directories for the same reason they choose to use search engines that are specific to their country: because it results in friendlier search listings for internet users in that country.

Inclusion in these directories is a great way to be discovered by customers from around the world who use these directories to find what they are looking for and to again rank even higher with search engines, since they place greater value on websites that have been accepted into their web directory. It may also help get your websites indexed by these search engines more quickly. All the additional benefits of English-based website directories still apply, including the SEO benefits that come from these one-way links and customized anchor text, as well as the marketing and budget benefits of free, targeted website traffic.

Failure to use a country-specific top-level domain extension for your translated websites may result in slower international growth for your business. The practice of giving your translated websites a country-specific top-level domain extension should be as important to your business as any other SEO strategy. Then, and only then, will you be able to target and receive the type of international attention that your company needs to flourish in a global market place.

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Machine Translation – How Bad Is It?

To a certain extent, it’s quite amazing that a piece of software can take a piece of text and magically translate it into any languages. Website owners often wonder how accurate those free tools are and if they should use it on their websites. Unfortunately, the result is often dismal. Being native in French, and fairly at ease with Spanish, I always notice a website that has been translated using a free machine translation tool, and it is not pretty.

Now, being that I represent a human translation agency, I’m probably not exactly objective when it comes to machine translation. So, instead of taking my word for it, let’s take a look at a simple example.

Take the below short four sentences paragraph, which I wrote in French, and then translated myself (literally) in English:

Bob travaille pour une petite entreprise au centre-ville. Le travail de Bob consiste dans la réparation d’ordinateurs et l’installation de nouveaux logiciels. Durant ses temps libres, il aime lire, regarder des films et jouer au poker avec ses amis. Bob a 30 ans et vit dans une grande maison avec sa femme et ses enfants.

Bob works for a small company downtown. Bob’s job consists of repairing computers and installing new software. In his spare time, he likes to read, watch movies and play poker with his friends. Bob is 30 years old and lives in a big house with his wife and kids.

Now, I used one of the popular free translation software to translate the same French text. I got the following result:

Bobsled works for a small business to the center city. The work of Bobsled consists in the repair of computers and the installation again software. During its free time, it likes to read, look at films and to play poker with its friends. Bobsled is 30 years old and lives in a big house with his woman and its children.

Four sentences, and already we can spot at least 10 significant mistakes. And don’t ask me why Bob gets translated in Bobsled!

So, let’s take it further. Since many use free machine translation to offer their pages in other languages, let’s try to get a better idea of what get shown to their foreign visitors.

I took the human translated English text and used the machine translation to translate it in French and then retranslate it in English. Here is the result:

Bobsled works for a small company in city. The bobsled work consists in to repair computers and installing again software. In its leisures, it likes to read, look at poker of films and piece with its friends. Bobsled is 30 years old and lives in a big house with his woman and its childlike ones.

Obviously, here, there’s the double effect of the machine translation, but, truth is, machine translation is even worst when translating from English into another language than the other way around. Publishing copy like the one above is like slapping your readers in the face!

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Applying at a Translation Agency – Or The Art of Getting Your Foot in the Door in a Non-Annoying Way! (Part I)

This post is intended to give tips to job seeking translators on a very specific, but important point; applying at a translation firm. These are based on personal experiences, so you may or may not agree with them, as they are mainly based on my personal view on the subject.

I’m always surprised by the number of applications we receive – sometimes even to my personal email. While it’s understandable – cold-calling, so to say, is an important aspect for a starting translator – it’s saddening to see the total disregard to quality that is given to the process by many translators. Now, here are a couple points to take into consideration the next time you send your resume to an agency:

  • Send more than a CV. I NEVER read an application which only consists of a pasted CV. Sadly this seems to be the most common practice for many translators. Sure, it’s fast and allows them to “contact” more companies in a short amount of time, but it sends so many wrong signals. Are you really in such a hurry that you can’t write a couple of lines? Do you honestly believe that the employer will open your email and go “Wow, this person just pasted his resume in this email, it’s so long, so many credentials, I can’t wait to hire this random person”? Employers are wiser than you think, really they are, and will recognize that this is just a generic application which, from the get-go, makes them feel like you don’t value their company very much. Saying “Hello” just takes five letters.
  • Send a personalized application. I usually quickly delete a pasted CV which is preceded by a (very) generic presentation. Now, I understand it can be a pain to write a personalized email/letter to every employer you contact. However, the reason I believe a lot of translators don’t think it’s worth the time to personalize their “cover letter” is that they expect it to be tossed; they’re playing the numbers game. What they don’t realize is that in the time it took them to generically contact 30 employers and perhaps, with a little luck, get one or two replies, they could have personally contacted 10 companies and received 4 to 6 interested replies. The idea of the first contact is not to get the or a job on the spot, but rather, like the name suggest, to establish a first contact with the employer – you want to attract him, you want him to want to get to know more about you. Now, I’m not saying you should do a lot of research and spend hours crafting your approach email. The use of a general template is even a good practice, and with time, you can modify it until you have a general template that gets you the good responses. However, you should always personalize it to a minimum. Little details; like instead of writing “I believe I could be an asset to your company”, put the actual name of the company. Browse through their website, read their about us page, and mention specific things about them in your letter. This is especially important if the agency didn’t place a “hiring ad” and you’re just cold-applying. The application should be about what you can do for them, based on their specific needs, and not about what you want. Employers already know what you want (at least in general); interesting projects with good remuneration in your field of expertise. What they don’t know is ‘what good hiring you will do for me’?
  • Spell check, spell check, spell check! Personally, I put a lot of value on the presentation letter or the couple lines in your email (and I do mean couple of lines, see next point). I use it as an evaluation of their quality as a translator. Every detail reflects on your professionalism. A typo or two is acceptable, bad grammar and spelling mistakes are not. I doubt employers will expect perfection in that (I certainly don’t, and I’m sure you’ve spotted some mistakes in that post alone), but there shouldn’t be anything that jumps to the eye in an aggressive manner. Whenever I receive an application in bad English, or in bad French, or in bad Spanish, it’s a goner. If it’s in another language, it’s a goner by default, because I can’t read it!
  • Keep it short. Here’s a good old book I think everybody should read. Now, while you should always present yourself, and try to personalize it as mentioned in the first point, don’t write an essay. I personally think that a perfect first email shouldn’t have more than 5-6 lines with your resume attached or preferably a link to an online professional profile. Now there’s always exceptions – I’ve received one or two applications in the past that were almost as long as this post, but they were so well written and interesting that, by the end of reading them, I was hooked on the translators – but I think it’s a good rule of thumb. Once again, you want to establish a first contact and get the employer to reply. On the follow up email, you’ll be able to go in more details if you need to. Truth is, employers are or at least think they are too busy to read a long email, especially if they didn’t expect it (cold-applying); by keeping it short and to the point, you’re increasing the chances that they’ll take the time to read and not press on the delete button.

While we’re on the subject of keeping it short and to the point, I believe this post is more than long enough. Please feel free to comment about the above points, whether you agree or not. (I want to state that this post is not a call for random applications).

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2008, going strong!

Now I haven’t had the chance to update the blog in the past weeks, and that’s because we’ve been busy catering to our increasing number of clients. While attracting new clients is always an obvious objective, I’m very satisfied with the number of returning clients we’ve been able to keep month after month. I believe there’s no better assessment of the work we’re doing.

The site is coming up nicely and should be completely ready on the first week of February. The copywriter we’re using – Angelique, a writer I had to chance to work with for a while now – is doing an amazing job in spawning the pages that are slowly appearing on the website, and in really reflecting the spirit of our company. The website pages are being published on a ‘as ready’ process for a number of reasons. First off, we’re not a new company, hence, while we plan to make the new website a central part of our business, there’s no real need for secrecy surrounding the project. Secondly, we have not started marketing the website itself yet and we just recently started using our new brand name, hence the site is probably only getting traffic from existing customers – chances are, if you’re reading this (old) post, the website has already been launched!