As a native Spanish speaker, crafting my resume turned out to be harder than expected. With numerous internship and social work experiences that originated in Nicaragua, my home country, naming and describing them in English simply became a tedious job that consisted of attempting to translate bits and pieces of their mission and incorporating them into my final product. Needless to say, finding a service that would professionally translate my resume/CV was something that I was craving.
Some quick Google searches and website visits later, I found that there were not few, but numerous companies and professional translators that offered their talents online. Up to that day, I had never really explored the idea, and finding out that there was a gold mine of options when it comes to translating one’s resume also became a fastidious ordeal.
Now, after going through the majority of resources, I concluded that the best fit for me was to search through a website like translatorsbase.com, a site in which certified translators personally post and advertise their different services and languages and all one has to do is contact the one that seems most adequate for the specific work required. The problem is that this classifies as hiring someone to translate your resume for you, and, as part of my research, I wanted to figure out how to obtain unpaid help for the same job.
Perhaps the most obvious direction in which one would go to when looking for help in this matter would be asking a friend or parent who is fluent in English, which is what I did. I once had my American friend to help me with a few aspects of the resume; however, I realized that in certain instances even she didn’t know what vocabulary to employ. Because of the professional and sometimes technical nature of a resume, it is quite possible that some words or phrases are unrecognizable to individuals who do not specialize in that sort of language. Hence, I had hit a roadblock. What to do now?
I went back to searching for help online, only this time I added the word ‘free’ in front of my query. What I encountered were a variety of databases that offered a similar service to that of Google Translate, yet accredited with professional translating services. I wondered if the outcome would be identical to Google’s own app, so I decided to compare the results side by side, and what I observed was that websites like freetranslation.com were more thorough in their job. I then proceeded to translate the sections from my resume that were troubling me, and used the results I received from the website in my new, final English copy.
Then once everything was in place and as exactly translated as my means allowed it to be, I contacted a professional translator from an advertisement and simply sent in my resume to be looked over and slightly edited where necessary. Yes, this specific service was charged, but if reassurance is needed (which it probably is when talking about a resume in a second language), then a professional must look it over to make sure mistakes are avoided. With the help of the online networks mentioned before, translating my CV to English ended up being less of a hassle than it initially seemed to be.
With help from reliable internet sources, a professional translator, and willing-to-help friends, translating my resume and prepping it for scrupulous observation by prospective employers was now possible. Because of the importance of this document, it is imperative that its content be accurately placed and written, not to mention looked over by a serious and knowledgeable figure to avoid any silly mistakes and/or missing information. I was no longer lacking the confidence to hand it in.
Photo Credit: Trudi1
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