08:08 Sep 1, 2011 

Yes, I looked for sample letters too, and like all properly-written business letters they of course do all have a heading. But none of them is headed "job application". The heading needs to more specific if it is to attract the recipient's attention. I would think a heading that reads "job application" is likely to go to the bottom of the recipient's list of priorities.

As a translator I would be strongly sympathetic to the writer's desire to find a job and I would wish to help them as much as I could, over and above merely translating the Italian, word for word, into its English equivalent.

07:59 Sep 1, 2011 

It's certainly the translator's task to produce a text that is fit for purpose, but the sample covering letters on the Open University Careers Advisory Service website, for example, all have headers ... (http://www.open.ac.uk/careers/application-letters.php). Are they swimming against the tide?

07:51 Sep 1, 2011 

In my opinion it would be very impolite (at least here in the UK) to head a letter "Job application" or "employment application" etc. There are other forms that have to be adopted if one is seeking an interview for work and if one wants to be taken seriously it's very important to get those forms right, or that "job application" will go straight in the trash. So in this case I would think it's the translator's task to inform the client of what the correct epistolary forms would be; not to just mechanically translate the Italian text.