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Meet Wendy — Chinese-English Interpreter & Translator at Coupang Taiwan

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Wendy Thumbnail

Nice to meet you, Wendy. Would you please introduce yourself?

Hi, I’m Wendy. I’m a Chinese-English interpreter and translator at Coupang Taiwan. I joined the company in early July 2021, so I’m one of the first few employees of Coupang Taiwan.

What experiences did you have before joining Coupang Taiwan?

Since graduating in 2014, I’ve primarily worked as an in-house interpreter/translator. It might sound monotonous, but my career path has taken me to vastly different industries, spanning from heavy industry and electromechanics to finance and insurance. Depending on the needs of each company, I’ve also provided support in various language combinations between Chinese, English, and Japanese.

What is the main role of the interpretation/translation team at Coupang Taiwan, what kind of projects do you work on?

As of January 2022, there are two Chinese – English interpreters and one Chinese – Korean interpreter in Coupang Taiwan, and our job is to provide language support to all colleagues of Coupang Taiwan and projects they are collaborating with respective departments in Coupang Korea.  We support every function in the company, so the scope of our job is as broad as the scope of the e-commerce business in Taiwan – which is to say, very broad. Translation assignments we process include email correspondences, website, and back-end system contents, and training materials. Meetings we provide bilingual or trilingual support include candidate interviews, customer research, and internal or external meetings over discussions like procurement progress tracking, payment flow, and warehouse construction, just to name a few.

What makes Coupang Taiwan special in your opinion?

I believe Coupang Taiwan is in a unique sweet spot in the employment landscape. By all means, it’s a start-up in Taiwan, with all the excitement and fast-paced challenges only an innovative new company can bring. At the same time, it has the backing of the mother company in Korea, which is much more established, has abundant knowledge of well-proven processes and SOPs to share, and is more than willing to invest in Taiwan. So for job seekers who enjoy the thrill and freedom of working in a start-up, but might be worried about the company’s sustainability, Coupang Taiwan would be an ideal choice.

The same is true for aspiring in-house interpreters and translators. The actual work of translating and interpreting we do at Coupang Taiwan is similar to that in any company that requires language support, and there is a sense of comfort in knowing we can utilize what we learned in school or previous positions and get up to speed quickly. However, while contents that require translating/interpreting usually become repetitive in other large companies after a while, the start-up nature of Coupang Taiwan ensures that interpreters and translators are exposed to brand new topics and projects even months after onboarding. For me, this fine balance between familiarity in the techniques required and novelty in the contents we interact with and learn from is why Coupang Taiwan is so special.

Interpretation booth

What are you looking forward to in your current team?

I was so surprised when I learned that Coupang Korea is the largest employer of in-house interpreters and translators in Korea, employing over 100 interpreters and translators, and even has meeting rooms with interpreting booths in the home office! The scale of the language support team is unprecedented and unheard of in Taiwan.

Currently, the interpreter and translator team in Coupang Taiwan is still small, but we already benefit so much from working with teams in Korea and other countries, and with business, units used to multi-language support. Most Coupang Korea users we encounter know what interpreters need to do our jobs well, such as providing meeting material upfront or maintaining good online meeting etiquette, and they are very understanding when we have scheduling conflicts.

I’m excited to see our team in Taiwan grow so that more interpreters and translators here in Taiwan can have a taste of what it’s like working in a company that prioritizes comfort in communication for its employees. I also look forward to fostering the same kind of culture that value and respect the work of interpreters here in Coupang Taiwan.

What kind of profile are you looking for to join the team at Coupang Taiwan?

We’re looking for experienced interpreters that are a deployable asset on day one. Our team members need to learn voraciously, be interested in knowing more and more about the business, and not be afraid of constantly encountering different topics in their daily work. If you seek the stability of full-time employment, but also dislike routine and need variety in the work you do, Coupang Taiwan will be the ideal place for you.