CV and Resume Translation Services in the UK

How Much Does CV Translation Cost in the UK, and How Fast Is It?

Standard CV translation costs £0.10 a word, which on a two-page CV usually means somewhere between 400 and 600 words of chargeable text, counted and shown to you before you order rather than estimated as a range afterwards. Delivery is 2 to 3 working days. What the rate buys is a translator who is a native speaker of the target language and works in the recruitment market of your target country, a second linguist who checks the result sentence by sentence against what you sent, under ISO 17100, and a Project Manager who releases the file. That is the whole translation process, and there is no cheaper tier underneath it, because the review step is what the standard consists of.

The rate does not move with the language pair. A CV into Spanish, German or Polish is priced according to its word count, exactly like one into Arabic, Japanese or any of the Scandinavian languages. What a rarer pair changes is the delivery date, because fewer linguists work in it, and the quote tells you that before you commit. Everything here is priced per word except certification, which is priced per page. Where a closing date will not wait, a 24-hour express slot is available on most pairs and is confirmed in writing when you place your order.

What the price does not buy is a new CV. Choosing the job titles, the register, and the date and address conventions of the destination market is translation work, and localisation in the sense this page uses it means exactly that. Changing the length, adding a photograph, re-ordering a career history or rewriting achievements is CV writing, which is a different service, and it does not happen quietly inside a translation job. Where your document carries something the destination market would find unusual, or leaves out something it expects, you get that in writing and you decide what to change.

Your CV comes back in the file you sent. Word, PDF, Publisher and the other editable formats are worked on in place, with the layout, the headings and the document structure left where you put them, so nothing has to be rebuilt before you attach it to an application form or a recruitment portal. Text expands when it changes language — German and Finnish run longer than English, and a tight two-page CV can spill onto a third page — and where that happens we say so and fit it back if that is what you want.

Every CV is read twice. The reviewer is a native speaker of the target language, and the point of the second read is that it happens against your original rather than against the translation alone — which is how a job title that looks plausible and is wrong gets caught. The Project Manager then puts the two files side by side, looking for anything inserted, missing or quietly improved. Two linguists on a short document is what it takes to deliver high-quality work at this length. Your CV is also personal data — it carries your address, your dates and sometimes your date of birth — and it is handled under UK GDPR, which is a law rather than a certification.

Our language services reach past career documents: expert translators with legal expertise, specialists in medical documents, and teams for academic and business work. That is why every technical translation and professionally translated document is handled by someone who works in that subject area rather than by whoever happens to be free.

What £0.10 a Word Covers, and When You Pay by the Page Instead

Standard CV and resume translation is £0.10 a word. The quote shows the word count it was measured on, so you can check it against your own file before you accept it. Cover letters, LinkedIn profiles, personal statements and portfolio text are the same rate, and sending them together means the whole set is built on one glossary: a job title spelled one way in the letter cannot come out spelled another way in the CV. A recruiter holding both documents sees that mismatch before anything else. The rate is the same for one document or for six, and it does not fall as the set grows.

Certified CV translation is £30 a page for up to 250 words, back in 24 to 48 hours, with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy naming the translator and stating that the translation is complete and accurate. There is no official register of certified translators in England and Wales and no sworn-translator system of the kind France, Italy or Spain operate, so what a UK authority asks to see is a translation carrying that signed statement. Where a foreign consulate or court requires a sworn translation instead, that is £55 a page and takes 7 to 14 working days. Notarisation and legalisation are separate steps, taken after the translation, when a document has to be used abroad.

Ask for a free quote and an itemised price for your resume translation service or CV translation service comes back inside the hour, with the delivery date on it. Send the cover letter, the LinkedIn text, the application form answers, the degree certificate and the transcript in the same message and they are quoted together, at the same rate, as one application package.

Know what you need translating? Send the file and a firm price, with the delivery date on it, comes back inside the hour.

Which Documents Do You Need to Translate With Your CV and Cover Letter?

Usually three, sometimes five. The CV and the cover letter go together, and proof of your qualifications follows as soon as somebody takes you seriously: a degree certificate, an academic transcript, and for regulated work a registration document or a licence. UK employers and universities want those in English; employers abroad want them in the local language, and the wording has to match across the set, because two versions of the same job title read as two different jobs.

How Does a UK CV Differ From the CVs and Resumes Employers Expect Abroad?

A UK CV leaves out almost everything a continental European CV puts in. No photograph, no date of birth, no marital status, no nationality; two pages for an experienced professional, and referees or a line saying references are available on request at the end. Across much of Europe the reverse is the norm, which is the single most useful thing to know in either direction. Espresso translates what you send and tells you which conventions your document does not meet; adding or removing a section is your decision rather than ours.

The UK Baseline, and What Happens When an Overseas CV Arrives Here

In the UK the document is a CV, it runs to roughly two pages, and the personal details that could invite a discrimination claim are left off deliberately — that is the reason for the missing photograph, not a matter of taste. Some employers still ask for a Europass CV, which has its own fixed fields. Coming the other way, the hard part is the qualification: an overseas degree classification does not map onto a UK first, 2:1 or 2:2, and a translator who invents an equivalent has awarded you a grade you were never given. We render the award and the grade as they were issued and leave the comparison to UK ENIC, the national agency that issues statements of comparability, which is where a UK employer or university goes when it wants one.

Germany, Austria and Switzerland: the Lebenslauf Asks for What a UK CV Omits

The German Lebenslauf is the mirror image of the UK rule. Employers there expect the photograph, the date of birth and the nationality a UK CV omits, a career history that accounts for every year, and a signature at the foot of the page; they expect a factual register rather than a self-promotional one: British achievement bullets read as boasting once they are carried across literally. Our German translators know the DACH job market and write the Lebenslauf as a German document rather than as an English one in German words. Whether you add the photograph is still your call — we tell you what is expected and translate what you send.

France, Spain and Italy: Shorter, and a Photograph Is Normal

The French CV is usually one page, two for senior roles, a photograph is common, and employers want responsibilities described concisely rather than achievement statements built around numbers. Spanish and Italian practice sits close to the French. The translation problem here is compression: an English CV written to fill two pages has to say the same things in fewer words, and deciding what survives is a judgement about that market, which is why the translated text is read by a second linguist who works in it. The translators adapt the register; they do not adapt the facts.

Japan and South Korea: a Form Rather Than a CV

Japanese employers often ask for a rirekisho, which is not a CV at all but a standard form with fixed fields, completed in the same order by everybody, usually carrying a photograph, a date of birth and the personal details a UK CV omits. South Korean practice is similarly formal and structured. Where a field on that form has no answer in the document you sent, we tell you which ones are empty; we do not fill them in for you, because inventing a line on a form is not translation.

The Gulf: the Personal Details a UK CV Never Carries

CVs used across the GCC — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman — commonly carry nationality and date of birth, and many employers still expect marital status, references and a photograph, every one of which a UK CV deliberately leaves out. Employers there often want an Arabic version beside the English one. Our Arabic translation services are delivered by native Arabic linguists who work in Gulf recruitment, and the two versions are kept consistent with each other.

Know the country already? Say so with your file, and the quote comes back with a note on what that market expects. Inside the hour, as usual.

What Happens After You Upload Your CV for Translation?

Four things, and the first takes an hour. You send the file and say where you are applying for a job, we quote it, a native linguist translates it and a second reads it, and the finished document comes back in the format you sent.

Can You Translate Your CV With a Free Tool, and Will an ATS Read It?

You can run a CV through a free translation tool and the grammar will usually come out right; the words that carry your career will not. A job title is the clear case — the dictionary word and the word employers in that country put in their own adverts are rarely the same, and only one of them is what a recruiter is reading for. Qualifications behave the same way: an Italian laurea magistrale, a German grade on the 1.0 to 4.0 scale and a UK 2:1 have no clean equivalent in each other’s systems, and a machine either substitutes one or guesses. Applicant tracking systems then match whatever words came out against a list the employer configured and nobody outside that company can see. A CV does not fail on language barriers alone; it fails on the wrong word for the right job.

So the choice of word is made deliberately here, and you are told which choices were made. The file goes to a linguist translating into their own language who works in that recruitment market; a second linguist then reads it against your original; the Project Manager releases it. Where a job title, a degree or a grade has no counterpart in the target system, the original stays on the page with a short gloss beside it, because a flattering near-match is a claim you never made. No translator can promise that your CV meets local hiring expectations, because local hiring expectations are set by the person reading it, and nobody should tell you their file has been tuned to a screening system they cannot see. What we can tell you is that the qualifications on the page are the ones you hold, in the words that market uses.

When Does a UK Employer or the Home Office Ask for a Certified Translation?

An employer almost never asks; the Home Office asks as a matter of routine. Any document submitted with a UK visa or settlement application that is not in English or Welsh has to be accompanied by a certified translation, and the Home Office publishes what that has to contain: a confirmation that it is an accurate translation of the original document, the date, and the name and contact details of the translator or the translation company. Universities and professional regulators ask for the same thing when they are relying on a document rather than simply reading it. Espresso provides certified translation for a CV and, far more often, for the documents that travel with one.

Certified CV translation is £30 a page for up to 250 words, back in 24 to 48 hours. In practice the CV is the least likely thing in the file to need it: birth and marriage certificates, degree certificates, transcripts and police certificates are the official documents that get certified, and sending them together is what keeps the names, dates and qualification wording identical from one to the next, so the whole set is accurately translated rather than separately translated. If you are not sure which version you need, tell us who is asking for the document and we will tell you — including when the answer is the standard one.

What Should You Ask a CV Translation Service Before You Order?

Four questions separate a translation agency that does the work from a shopfront that resells it. Ask them in this order, and the answers tell you what you are buying before you pay for it. A long list of services provided matters far less than whether anybody will put their name to the review step.

Who translates? It should be a native speaker of the target language who works in that recruitment market, whether you need professional Spanish translation, German or a rarer pair. Who reads it afterwards? A second linguist under ISO 17100, not the same person twice, and a named Project Manager at the end. What does it cost and when does it arrive? A price per word and a delivery date, in writing, before you order. And what happens when a degree title has no equivalent in the target system? A provider that promises you a local equivalent is telling you it will invent one. Freelance translators with proven experience answer all four as well as a company can; what matters is that somebody answers them, and that the customer reviews you read talk about translation quality rather than speed alone.

What Else Needs Translating When You Take a Job Abroad?

A job in another country drags a small archive behind it. Espresso provides professional translation services for the rest of that archive — the document translation that proves who you are and what you have done — and international job seekers usually need at least one of these alongside the CV. Global job applications ask for more paperwork than domestic ones, and this is where most of it comes from.