Native English translator/copyeditor

(rates to be set in Russian rubles only)

Please read the job description carefully and completely!

Responses that do not comply with our requirements
will be considered last or ignored altogether.

Task options

1. Regular copyediting of Russian into English translations without verifying their semantic consistency with the source copy (please refer to the detailed task description with a sample translation to evaluate initial translation quality and scope of work).

2. In-depth copyediting of Russian into English translations, including end-to-end verification of their semantic consistency with the source copy (please refer to the detailed task description with a sample translation to evaluate initial translation quality and scope of work).

3. Native quality translation from Russian into English.

Key subject areas (in order of priority)

Management consulting in various industries, economics, finance, corporate communications, banking, legal services, FMCG, marketing, HR, metallurgy, and others

Requirements

The candidates are expected to set their rates and accept payments in Russian rubles. Due to unfavorable exchange rates, we cannot fix your rates in euros or US dollars.
The candidates are expected to be language professionals with a NATIVE level of English. Please note that if you are not a native speaker and just have an advanced level of English, it’s not what we are looking for. If you are a native speaker, you need more than just native fluency — you need to be a language professional with a perfect command of English.
The required level of Russian: for Tasks No. 2 and 3, applicants should be able to grasp the semantic subtleties of the source copy and understand whether the translation is semantically accurate. If this is not the case, please describe your actual level of proficiency in Russian.
Considerable experience of translation or copyediting in a number of the subject areas mentioned above; ability to adequately convey the meaning of the source copy while meeting the existing stylistic, idiomatic or terminological standards and avoiding spelling or punctuation mistakes; elegant style and a feel for language, logic and meaning.
Concentration, attention to detail, and ability to meet deadlines and carefully follow instructions.
Ability to be realistic about what you can and can’t do.
Desire to learn and ability to critically evaluate your work and accept constructive criticism.
Ability to work effectively with other translators as a team.
Good computer skills (Microsoft Office, Memsource).

Conditions

Remote freelance work.
We negotiate the price of a standard page (1,800 characters with spaces or 250 words) in Russian rubles with each candidate individually depending on how grammatically correct and compelling their cover letter is and on how well they did their test assignments. We agree on all the terms and conditions before our cooperation begins.
Before starting to work with the candidate we enter into a non-disclosure agreement with them and provide them with detailed guidelines, translation memory databases, extensive glossaries and access to the entire collection of translations made for our customers, with indexing and search capabilities.
Our in-house translators and copyeditors can provide our freelance contributors with remote support during our office hours, Moscow time.
Remuneration is paid once a month in Russian rubles.
We are interested in stable and long-term cooperation

Requirements to applicants’ responses

Please write to us at in English with “NATIVE COPYEDITOR: your last name” in the subject line and support your CV with a detailed cover letter in English.

At the very beginning of your letter please let us know which of the above three tasks you are ready to do and specify your rate for each task in Russian rubles per standard page (1,800 characters with spaces or 250 words).
Please specify in which subject areas (preferably from those listed above) you have experience.
If you are ready to do task options 2 and 3, describe your level of proficiency in Russian.
Specify your preferred working hours (Moscow time) and provide your contact phone number (we guarantee complete confidentiality of your personal data).
Your letter and CV will be our first chance to see whether you comply with the above requirements, including your language, spelling, attention to detail and ability to follow instructions. This will be the first step of the selection process. Successful applicants will proceed to the next step and will be asked to make a couple of small test assignments.

Tips for applicants

The letter should provide a deeper insight into your professional life but should by no means be the exact copy of your CV. Token two-liners do not pass for adequate cover letters and will be considered last or ignored altogether. If you are not ready to take the time to tailor your letter specifically for us, you are probably not as interested in getting this job as we would wish.
Cliché descriptions applicable to any kind of intellectual work are not welcome.
When you write your cover letter, we recommend that you focus on your personal approach to translation and your favorite working methods and tools rather than on your background. We will appreciate if you tell us about any aspects of your professional work that you would like to highlight: your choice of reference sources, quality control, daily planning, techniques to increase your translation speed, software you use, mnemonic aids, any innovative methods, and so on. The best responses are those which demonstrate the applicants’ deep understanding of the work they do.
Please make sure that you carefully read all the requirements. We ask you to take them seriously and at face value. If you do not meet some of them, be honest about it. Perhaps, you have some other special skills that can compensate for the gap. We are committed to putting every reasonable effort to make the best of your unique skills and advantages.

Our approach to assessing job applicants’ CVs and cover letters

Reviewing our job applicants’ CVs and cover letters, we look at their style, language, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, internal logic, and the balance of original ideas and clichés.

We look beyond specialist degrees, academic qualifications, impeccable references or blue chip employers. What really matters is how job applicants express themselves in every word and phrase they write. In our book, a true language professional is the one who understands that anything with their name on it – be it a test translation, a CV or a cover letter – is viewed by a serious employer as a showcase of the candidate’s skills. In correspondence with a potential employer, members of our profession have an early chance to impress. Metaphorically speaking, if you are a good shoemaker, don’t turn up to an interview barefoot. Strangely enough, this simple thought comes as a shattering revelation for some of our applicants.

This is why we always request detailed cover letters, warning prospective job applicants that token two-liners, blanket-emailed to a dozen employers, will be ignored. But if you take the time to tailor your letter specifically for us, you will have our undivided attention.

Daria Peers
Chief English Editor

Our approach to quality assurance

Translation of important public documents for major corporate customers is in many ways similar to the manufacturing and sale of executive cars. If a semantic error creeps into the translation, you as a translator fail to achieve your primary goal – convey the meaning of the source copy accurately. It’s very much like trying to satisfy a demanding customer by selling him an expensive car which suddenly stalls after just a few meters. Your customer would go away outraged spreading a bad word about your brand. This is why the absence of semantic errors is just a basic minimum requirement to translation.

Now imagine you managed to convey the meaning accurately, but the style leaves much to be desired, and the reader gets distracted by numerous flaws: cumbersome phrases, awkward structures, too many superfluous words, logical inconsistencies, misplaced emphasis, translator’s own made-up words instead of common industry-specific terminology… It’s like a car that started and drives smoothly, but air conditioning and windscreen wipers do not function, and one of the windows only drops half way. Would anyone want an executive car with such defects? Could anyone rely on such a translation given that the quality of company’s communications is vital for its public image and success? The answer is no.

Our customers are impressed by our translations because our regular specialists deliver copy of decent quality and our editors only need to add the final linguistic polish and bring it to perfection. If they had to weed out numerous grave errors, we would not be able to deliver the work on time. Let alone urgent tasks when there’s simply no room for editing at all… By the way, when it comes to urgency, we are second to none because our regular translators are trained to assume that their work could go directly to the client and take full ownership of the copy they deliver.

Today many translators believe they just need to make some sort of a semi-finished product which needs a great deal of effort from a copyeditor to make it an impeccable document valuable to the customer. We don’t have anything in common with such an approach. Engaging a translator, we expect to receive a self-contained, robust version of the source copy true to the rules and standards of the target language. Our cooperation will only be successful if we are on the same side on this.

Philipp Grigoriev
Chief Russian Editor

Ability to follow instructions

Our requirements to you as job applicants are not there just to annoy you or show off our high standard of work. When we tell you what we expect from you, we really mean it. That is why we recommend focusing on such requirements as attention to detail and an ability to follow instructions. These qualities turn out to be absolutely vital when you work on an urgent and important assignment and we have no time to repeat instructions, much less to make up for your failure to follow them.

Here is an example of instructions we can give you with a real translation assignment. “Please translate Chapters 4, 6 and 9, except for the table on pages 67—72 and the section “Preliminary findings” at the end of each chapter. Translate all the Russian text into English in the standard mode. Please check the text that has already been translated into English and correct it when necessary, ensuring it is consistent with your translation. Please note that you should insert your changes in the Track Changes mode, assigning a new reviewer’s name for each chapter, e.g. “ELS_Ch_4” for Chapter 4, etc. To change a reviewer’s name, go to MS Word settings and remember that once changed the new name will apply to all the changes made afterwards. Please also make sure to switch off the Track Changes option when proceeding from editing to translation.” Your failure to read and follow all the instructions can threaten the whole translation project to derail completely. No matter how brilliant a translation you delivered, if you ignored the instructions and translated the wrong part of the document, it can turn out to be a catastrophe for us.

That is why we start by testing every candidate for attention to detail and an ability to follow instructions to make sure we can rely on them when working on a demanding task to a tight schedule.

Oleg Litskevich
Project Coordinator