Now your LinkedIn profile speaks Español, Français, & 41 more languages
Since the launch of the Spanish language version of LinkedIn, we’ve had one consistent request from our multilingual users – how can I create a Spanish profile as well?
After all, if you’re a professional in today’s global world, your network may extend well beyond the borders of your home country. And if a Spanish-speaking contact comes to view your profile via the Spanish version of LinkedIn, shouldn’t they be viewing your profile in Spanish as well?
We, of course, thought this was a great idea. So today we’re rolled out the ability to translate your existing LinkedIn profile into any of 41 languages.
Once translated, your original profile remains unchanged, but members that prefer to use or search LinkedIn in a different language will see the translated version instead. So if you create a Spanish profile via the steps below, LinkedIn members using the site in Spanish will see your Spanish profile instead of your English one.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Creating Your LinkedIn Profile in a Different Language
Creating a translated version of your profile in a desired language is easy. Just click on the “Profile” link in the left hand side navigation and go to your “Edit My Profile” page.
On this page, click the “Create your profile in another language” link on the right hand side.
2. Beginning to Translate Your New Profile
After clicking the link above, you’ll be given the chance to kick-start the translation process by choosing the language into which you are translating and proving a translated first name, last name, and professional “headline”. Throughout the translation process we will show the content on your original (or as we call it, primary) profile to guide you in your work (it’s in blue below).
Once you complete the initial translation step above, you will be brought to the “Edit My Profile” page for the language into which you are translating your profile.
This page is just like the normal “Edit My Profile” page but is now editing the translated version of your profile in the language that you’ve chosen. Note that you can always return to this page (or find the “Edit My Profile” page for any language in which you’ve created a profile) by using the drop down in the upper right hand corner of the page.
3. Completing the Translation
You’ll notice that to keep things simple, many of the elements of your profile are shared across all of your profile languages and versions. If you add a position, for example, it will appear on your profile for all languages.
However, from the “Edit My Profile” page for the desired language, you can always click on any of the “Edit” links to adjust how that position, education or other piece of information appears in the language of your choice.
On all such resulting edit pages, we will always show you content from your original/primary profile (in blue) to guide your adjustments & translation. These pages will also show you the full list of languages in which you have profiles (and where similar adjustments may be needed) on the right hand side of the page.
4. How Others Will View Your Profile
As usual, throughout your editing/translating process, you can always review how others will see your profile by clicking on the “View My Profile” tab. We’ve added the profile language drop down to the right hand corner of this page as well, so that you can always review your profile in all the languages into which you’ve translated it.
Starting today, LinkedIn members that use the site in Spanish will typically see the Spanish version of your profile on LinkedIn. And as LinkedIn continues to move into other languages & markets, the correct translation of your profile will be shown to members using or searching the site in those other languages.
LinkedIn’s new Search experience will also allow members to find profiles in a particular language.
5. Now Tell Us What You Think
We’re still very early in adjusting LinkedIn for the needs of our multilingual and multinational professionals. So whether you find this feature useful or not, please let us know by leaving a comment on this post or clicking on the “Help Improve LinkedIn” link at the bottom of any page on the site.
Tags: linkedinprofile
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Gil November 19th, 2008
Great feature!
Can you add Hebrew ?
Thanks,
Gil
David November 19th, 2008
I added a Spanish version but nothing much was translated. Is that the way it was designed? Also, is there a way to remove an additional version?
Adam Nash November 19th, 2008
Hi Gil,
We have to make a few additional modifications to support right-to-left languages like Hebrew and Arabic, but we’re definitely working towards providing that support as well.
Adam
Manop Kaewmoracharoen November 21st, 2008
I really love this feature. It makes my resume easily approaching new international markets in just one click.
Hopefully Thai language will be fully supported in the near future.
Thanks to the development team.
Paula Goes November 21st, 2008
I found out how to add my profile in Portuguese before reading this post, just by chance and loved the idea. I know Linkedin has been localized in Spanish. When will we have a Portuguse Linkedin? I am a professional translator and would be available to localize it, please check my profile!
Best
Paula Góes
Nicolas Roberge November 21st, 2008
When is the French version of the site is going to rollout?
Jitesh Manaktala November 23rd, 2008
I think its great way to reach, multilingual feature is amazing.
Guillaume Castevert November 25th, 2008
Many thanks for this GREAT improvement, that I have been waiting since I joined the site. I know many French friends who were bothered of joing because the site was English only. They will have no excuse now…
Congratulations also on the simplicity of the interface and the fact that you can have multiple profiles.
I think the only thing left to translate is the group profiles (it should be multilanguage too) and also you should ask user to define which languages they speak, so that when requesting introductions people know in which language to send the request.
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marcus erkenstam January 22nd, 2009
I have two profiles but it actually does not work to generate the .pdf for the second profile (the non-primary). Is this a bug or what. I use Swedish as second profile language.
BR, Marcus
Rik ten Wolde February 13th, 2009
With this new functionality I have created also a profile in my native language (Dutch). I would like to have this profile as my primary, and the English one as a second. How do I change this?
Felipe Cypriano February 18th, 2009
I’ve created a Portuguese profile, but when some user visit my public profile it is always visualized in English. Is there an easy way for “visitors” choose their preferred language?
Your server could recognize the browser’s preference for language and show it automatically in the preferred language. Or I could be able to set a parameter in the Linkedin Profile link, like: http://www.linkedin.com/in/felipecypriano?locale=pt (this don’t work, I tested it)
Regards
Pat March 19th, 2009
What if I want to remove the other profile I created?
How can I do that? Thanks.
dirkfrey March 23rd, 2009
@ Rik ten Wolde – At this point in time, we do not offer the ability to reassign a second profile as the primary profile. I have sent your feedback on to the appropriate product manager for consideration in future releases.
dirkfrey April 2nd, 2009
@ Pat I’ve forwarded this on for consideration in future releases but at this time we don’t provide that functionality.
Dan Andrew Brendstrup April 21st, 2009
I second Felipe Cypriano’s request — I’ve translated my profile into Danish, but my public profile is still in English, and I can’t find a way to link to the Danish version.
Being able to link to something like http://www.linkedin.com/en/brendstrup and http://www.linkedin.com/da/brendstrup would be pretty cool, so I could pass on links to my Danish profile to people that otherwise browse LinkedIn in English.
Thierry Gagnon April 26th, 2009
Great initiative. I have two issues i would like to raise:
1) Status updates are applied to all languages. I would expect to be able to customize my status update for each languages.
2) Because of point 1 I would like to delete the new (& incomplete) language profile I had created ad focus on the original one. Is it possible? I could find no “delete profile” option.
Dirk Frey April 28th, 2009
@Theirry- At this point in time the functionality you asked about is not possible but the idea has been forwarded to our product team for consideration in future releases.
Hugh May 19th, 2009
In a similar note to Thierry, by mistake, I managed to create a Spanish profile by mistake (was going for French), but there’s no delete option…
Also, it would be nice to be able to assign a non-english profile as a default for public profile, which by the comments doesn’t seem to be possible.
David June 7th, 2009
Hi,
Same as Thierry Gagnon and Hugh above, I’m not entirely satisfied with the multi-language feature and I would like to delete my incomplete profile in French. I really don’t want such an incomplete page to show up amongst linkedin search results.
Thanks
David