Assessors are matching duties to an occupation code
Skilled migration and professional registration schemes work by mapping your actual work onto a defined occupation. The assessor reads your experience letter looking for duties that correspond to a specific code, and they are strict about it.
This makes the duties paragraph the most consequential part of the document. A letter saying you “worked as a Software Engineer and performed related duties” gives an assessor nothing to match. One that describes designing, building and testing specific systems gives them something to work with.
A translation cannot add substance that is not in the original. What it can do is render technical duties precisely, using the terminology of the field rather than a loose paraphrase — and that distinction genuinely affects outcomes. Where an original uses an Indian job title with no clear foreign counterpart, we translate it literally and note the described duties rather than substituting a foreign title that may map to a different code.
If you have not yet obtained the letter, it is worth asking your employer to describe duties specifically before it is issued. That is far more effective than anything a translator can do afterwards.
Dates must survive contact with your other documents
Employment dates in the letter are cross-checked against salary slips, tax records, provident fund statements and your application form. Any inconsistency is a problem, and inconsistencies are common — a letter stating a joining month while records show a different one, or a notice period counted as employment in one document and not another.
The translation reproduces dates exactly as written. Where your letter disagrees with your other evidence, resolve it with your employer before submitting, not after an assessor raises it. We will flag a discrepancy if we can see one across documents you send together.
Letterhead is part of the evidence
The letterhead, company registration details, the signatory’s name and designation, contact details and the company seal are all translated. Verification bodies use them to contact the employer, and letters they cannot verify carry little weight.
Photograph the complete page. Letterheads print to the edge and are frequently cropped, and seals overlapping a signature photograph poorly — check the seal text is readable before sending.
Experience letter or relieving letter
These are different documents serving different purposes. A relieving letter confirms you left and were cleared; an experience letter sets out your role, duties and tenure.
Assessors usually want the experience letter, and sometimes both. Submitting only a relieving letter where duties were required means the assessment cannot proceed. Check which is specified before ordering a translation of the one you happen to have.
Salary figures and what they signal
Many experience letters state a salary. Where they do, it is translated with the currency named explicitly and the period stated — monthly, annual, or cost to company, which is an Indian convention that foreign assessors frequently misread as base salary.
Points-based migration systems sometimes award points against salary thresholds, and a figure that is ambiguous about its period or its inclusions can be assessed against the wrong benchmark. Where the original uses an Indian convention without explaining it, we render it as written and add a note identifying the convention rather than converting it.
If the company no longer exists
A closed employer is a real and common difficulty, because verification bodies cannot contact anyone to confirm the letter.
A translation cannot solve this. What helps is supporting evidence translated alongside — salary slips, provident fund statements, tax records, appointment letters — which collectively establish the employment even when the employer cannot be reached. Send whatever you hold and we will quote for the set rather than the single letter.