How to Translate Your Own LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn, the professional social network, allows you to create a user profile in multiple languages.

First of all, it’s best to set English as the default language of your LinkedIn interface, rather than other languages. All the new LinkedIn features are activated on the English interface first and only later in other languages. So, if you want to discover LinkedIn’s new features earlier, setting English as your default language in settings is the only way.

As far as the language of your profile is concerned, if you are only active on the Italian market, having your LinkedIn profile in Italian only is fine. But if you want to make international contacts, you should consider translating your profile into multiple languages.

Translating your LinkedIn profile will bring a range of benefits:

• users who don’t speak your language will be able to find you more easily
• if you work in an international sector, having your profile in multiple languages will give you a more professional image
• your chances of being contacted will increase exponentially (more languages = more chances) even just by using keywords in multiple languages.

The language you should translate your profile into depends on your target audience. Today, LinkedIn supports 27 different languages.

You can therefore create multiple profiles, one for each language you need.

How a multilingual LinkedIn profile works

Users can’t choose what language other people see their profile in. They will only see it in their language if that profile also has a version in that language, otherwise they will see it in their default language.

So, let’s imagine that Juan, a Spanish LinkedIn user, is visiting a profile owned by Mario, who is Italian.

Given that Juan’s default language is Spanish, he will see Mario’s profile in Spanish automatically, but only if Mario has translated his profile into Spanish.

On the contrary, if Mario has not translated his profile into Spanish, Juan will see Mario’s profile in Italian, Mario’s default language.

However, if Mario’s profile were translated into English, Juan would be able to choose it manually from a drop-down menu on the right-hand side of the page, and see the profile in English instead of Italian.

How to create a profile in another language

1. Click on the Me icon in the top right corner of the main LinkedIn bar.
2. Click View Profile.
3. Click on the globe icon
4. Click Add a profile in another language.
5. Choose a language from the drop-down list.
6. Enter your first name, last name, and tagline (you will see text in the default language below the text boxes)
7. Click Create Profile.

Since this is critical information and has a direct impact on your personal brand, we recommend professional translators.

Translated texts should be written or inserted in the same way as texts in the first language:

1. Click on the Me icon in the top right corner of the main LinkedIn bar.
2. Click View Profile.
3. Click the button for the language whose texts you want to insert or modify.
4. Scroll down to the edit section.
5. Click the pencil icon (Edit) to modify the texts in that section.
6. A window will open. In this window, click the tab for the language you want to edit.
7. Insert or edit the texts.
8. Click Save.