The following are samples of cover letters sent with attached CVs to thousands of translation agencies.
Dear Madam or Sir,
I am a German native speaker living and working in the Netherlands for the past 10 years. In recent years I have been working as a freelance translator and I am seeking more opportunities in this field.
At the moment I am mainly translating and proofreading in the language pairs from Dutch to German and English to German.
The projects I work on cover a wide variety of subjects, such as
product descriptions, content for online webshops, brand stories for webshops, business correspondence, catalogues and CVs.
In July of 2013 I translated a Dutch book to German: “Thuiskomen in De Gelderhorst – 60 jaar oog voor oudere Doven” by Peter van Veen. A summary can be found here: http://www.gelderhorst.nl/nach-hause-kommen-ins-de-gelderhorst/
As a volunteer, I have been translating and proofreading parts of the German website of HUMANIUM. One of the articles can be found here: http://www.humanium.org/de/selbstmord
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards, Katrin
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Dear Sir or Madam,
With the beginning of the new year, I have decided to expand my English-to-Arabic translation services to include new clients. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Language and Translation of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, with a specialization in the technical and manufacturing domains.
I am an experienced English-to-Arabic translator, having provided this service to clients for the past eight years. My charge for translation is Euro 0.07 per source word. For projects that only require proofreading, my charge is Euro 0.03 per source word. For large projects, I provide complimentary desktop publishing. Attached is a letter of recommendation and my CV for your review. Additional references are available upon request.
If your company maintains a services database, I would like to be included. If you have a registration form you can either mail to me or provide it online, I would appreciate it.
Thank you very much. I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards, Ahmed
Senior Arabic Translator
http://www.proz.com/profile/758803
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Dear Sir/Madam,
Let me introduce myself: My name is Hugo Barbosa. I am a European Portuguese translator. Since 1995, I have worked as such for numerous worldwide agencies.
I have a degree in Translation & Interpretation from Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa with specialization in English and French.
My main areas of specialization are:
- Telecommunications
- Information Technologies (IT)
- Software localization
- Mechanical engineering
- Game localization
Additional fields of work include: tourism, MSDS, marketing, chemistry, medical devices, pharmaceutics and civil engineering.
I am a very diligent translator. I can work weekends and even holidays if a project is urgent (although fees tend to be a bit higher – see below).
I have a dedicated high speed Internet connection and some of the most powerful tools capable of handling large volume projects such as Trados 2007, Trados 2009 and Trados 2011.
I guarantee the highest quality since I proofread all my translations cross-referencing terminology sources using an extensive library of dictionaries and technical sources. I am also a member of ProZ which draws on a vast pool of translators to help me find the most obscure terms.
My CV is attached to this message. Please note that it does not contain EVERY agency I worked with for the past 18 years but it is a representative sample and covers all my major and minor areas of specialization.
Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have. I will answer any questions and I will even do a small test, if necessary. I can provide references from previous agencies and my phone number is available on my signature below as is a link to my ProZ profile.
Although fees may vary according to the technical difficulty of a particular project, the base prices are as follows (assuming the use of a CAT tool):
New words: €0.05
Fuzzy matches: 50%-84%: €0.035
Fuzzy matches: 85-99% – €0.025
Repetitions / 100% – €0.018
Add to the overall budget any transfer costs by PayPal, bank or Moneybooker.
I am looking forward to hearing from you. Even if you are not interested on my proposal, please let me know so I can remove you from my list.
Thank you. Best regards,
Hugo
Website: http://www.proz.com/profile/7323
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Instructions How to Write Cover Letter and CV
- Translation memory software - August 4, 2018
- Work on an older, slower computer - August 3, 2018
- Machine translation - August 3, 2018
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Dear Sir/Madam,
Let me introduce myself. My name is Freya Lim. I am a Chinese translator who had worked as journalist for a Chinese newspaper previously.
I have a degree in Journalism from University of Tunku Abdul Rahman with specialization in mass communication and advertising.
My main areas of specialization are:
• Beauty & Plastic surgery
• Culture
• Travel & Lifestyle
• Food
Additional fields of work include: tourism, marketing, education, human and social, agriculture and pharmaceutics.
I am a very diligent translator. I can work on weekdays and weekends and even holidays if a project is urgent.
I am looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you.
Thank you. Best regards,
Freya Lim
Those are some very useful samples, but the rates are way too low. I worry you might be giving newbie translators the impression that €0.05 is a good rate for any translator to charge.
Depends on the language combination. Definitely low for anything related to Japanese, but good in many other languages. More details at translator charges, fees and rates.
Seems really low to me. I charge a lot more than that and have plenty of work.
What language combination do you offer and what rate do you charge?
I have been doing translation for almost twenty years. My language combinations are Armenian-English-Armenian, Russian-Armenian, and Russian-English. I usually charge 16-18 Euros per 1800 characters of output text (without spaces), which is almost 0.05-0.07, depending on the exchange rate of the Euro. Sometimes,depending on the complexity of the topic, I charge more. If the client wants the work to be done urgently, then I charge 1,5 times more, i.e. 24-27 Euros.
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