Dealing with difficult technical jargon in your application materials

If you are applying for jobs in a foreign language and also work in a field with highly demanding technical jargon, then the challenge of communicating your strengths and qualifications can seem doubly difficult. However, the truth is, that most of the writers I work with tend to handle the technical sections of their CVs, cover letters, and research proposals very well, even better sometimes than the less jargon-y sections. This is because technical jargon tends to follow very regular patterns that are very quickly learned by anyone who is regularly reading the literature.

However, in cases where you aren’t sure whether you are saying something the “right” way or whether a translation from your native language to English is correct, you can use a trick that I use when I am editing a document with a lot of terms and expressions I don’t recognize: consult Google. Google Scholar in particular is very useful for helping you determine how commonly a phrase or collocation appears in English-language publications. If a search for a particular string yields a lot of results, then you can be pretty certain that you are using this expression the correct way. If it yields no results, then you are still looking for the best way to say something (in a way that will be recognizable to your colleagues).