How to add courses taught in different languages to your CV
Thread poster: Rebecca Breekveldt
Rebecca Breekveldt
Rebecca Breekveldt  Identity Verified
Austria
French to Spanish
+ ...
Sep 6, 2017

Hello,

As I was working on putting together my CV, I kept coming up against this problem and wondered if anyone has any thoughts or insight to offer on this:
Aside from my translation degree, I have also done a few courses and attended several seminars/talks/workshops, but they were mostly in Spanish, French or English. Now I am putting my resume together in English and can't decide how to list them: I want an English speaking employer to understand what I have done and the s
... See more
Hello,

As I was working on putting together my CV, I kept coming up against this problem and wondered if anyone has any thoughts or insight to offer on this:
Aside from my translation degree, I have also done a few courses and attended several seminars/talks/workshops, but they were mostly in Spanish, French or English. Now I am putting my resume together in English and can't decide how to list them: I want an English speaking employer to understand what I have done and the skills it has helped me develop, but I also want to show that they were in the different languages I work with. My question is: do you translate the name of the course, leave it in the original language or put both (which I think could get a bit long!)?

Any recommendations are welcome
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Philippe Etienne
Philippe Etienne  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 01:43
Member
English to French
What I'd do Sep 7, 2017

I'd freely translate the course title so that the readership understands it, and add (training in Spanish) at the end between brackets.
Or something like that.

Philippe


 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 00:43
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
World of difference between proof of qualification and your CV Sep 7, 2017

I'd certainly advise you to have an English CV that's really in English. It doesn't have to be 100% accurate at the word level; it just has to be a truthful introduction to you as a professional translator - and that requires displaying the information in a way that the reader will understand. Even within one language, a reader from a totally different area may understand a word differently - for example, Baccalauréat means a very different thing depending on whether you got it in France or Que... See more
I'd certainly advise you to have an English CV that's really in English. It doesn't have to be 100% accurate at the word level; it just has to be a truthful introduction to you as a professional translator - and that requires displaying the information in a way that the reader will understand. Even within one language, a reader from a totally different area may understand a word differently - for example, Baccalauréat means a very different thing depending on whether you got it in France or Quebec (or some other francophone place, probably). So it's better to explain what it is and what it's equivalent to (if anything). It could be as simple as a translation of the course title, but I wouldn't use initial capital letters as that could be misleading. IOW, "Diploma in international marketing" rather than "International Marketing Diploma", just in case the IMD happens to exist somewhere. If potential clients really need the facts, and they're serious enough for you to want to spend time on them, they can be shown a copy of the actual diploma, after all. In my experience, they aren't at all interested. You'd add somewhere, maybe in parentheses, "studies in French"; "German-language program(me)", "course language: Spanish", or whatever.

Rebecca Breekveldt wrote:
I want an English speaking employer to understand what I have done

Hmm... do you mean a client? There's also a world of difference between a job-seeker's CV (one to be read by HR recruiters and potential employers) and a freelancer's CV (for marketing your services in a B2B relationship). If you're building a freelancer's CV, have a look at the Wiki here: http://wiki.proz.com/wiki/index.php/Creating_an_effective_CV_/_resume and use your own personal best format to present yourself to potential clients.
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How to add courses taught in different languages to your CV







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