Are foreign references OK?

April 5, 2009 11:03 PM

Are references not in English (but translated) as good as ones in English?

I am about to apply for a job as a middle school English teacher. The application asks for 3 references. For the last 6+ years I have been living and working in Japan, teaching English in elementary and junior high schools. I have an M.A. in English and Linguistics and as a grad student I TAed for a year and then taught English Composition for a year, so I feel that my academic qualifications are OK for the position I'm applying for. But since my last 6 years have been spent teaching ESL here in Japan, my references are going to be from principals and co-workers at the schools where I teach. The references will be in Japanese and I will have them professionally translated.

Do you think this is going to be a problem? Would it be better to get people from my old grad school to give me references instead of my current bosses and co-workers? I'd feel weird writing up some of these professors from my past saying "hey, dr. so-and-so, remember me from 6 or 7 years ago? Yeah, could I get a reference?"

posted by snwod to work & money (3 comments total)

I've had some hassles when places I've interviewed with wanted to contact my (international) references.

But these references are what you've got. They're current, and they're good (I hope!). I think you'll be fine.
posted by aint broke at 11:20 PM on April 5

In my experience, when an application asks for references, they just want names/titles/companies, so you don't really need to have a "letter of recommendation" type thing translated at all.
posted by polexa at 12:49 AM on April 6

What polexa said. Also,

a) don't expect that the Japanese references will adhere to the American(?) standards of giving references as vaguely as possible. It could come back to haunt you when your co-candidates have vague references and your Japanese supervisors actually gave an evaluation. (I work in Japan, and have had issues with the different HR standards.)

b) if you do have to show some evaluation, of course you know that teaching English (conversation) is very different from teaching English (essays, etc.). Wouldn't a mix of references be a good way to show your skills? The Japanese show you can work with that age group; the TA time shows you can teach to that subject matter. (I used to teach, and I was a student for a long time: for example, just because you can teach Spanish (I can) doesn't mean you can teach physics (can't).)

G'luck.
posted by whatzit at 4:30 AM on April 6