Workplace reviews and discussion: 美商美安美台股份有限公司台灣分公司

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The corporate values emphasized by the U.S. headquarters were completely absent and unfelt during the two-hour interview at the Taipei headquarters. I deeply felt that Amway's emphasis on partner values was merely a hypocritical slogan, and that its so-called brand values amounted to saying one thing and doing another.

The GM entered the interview office with a long, sour face, did not greet me or introduce herself, and immediately opened my résumé and began asking questions. Throughout the process, I felt as though I were being interrogated as a suspect in a prosecutor's office (I have experience as a legal interpreter and understand that setting).

The questions included: Why don't you live with your family (what does that have to do with the job?), and why aren't you married (what does that have to do with this position?). After graduating, I ended three full-time jobs, each lasting about a year, and then worked independently on assignments for nearly six years. The GM immediately said that a translator with self-employment experience similar to mine had once said, two weeks after starting, that they could not adapt to a nine-to-five lifestyle and wanted to resign. The GM also strongly stated, “The reason my attitude is so harsh is that I don't want another translator who can't last two weeks.”

It was outrageous for a GM in charge of the entire Taiwan region to ask questions that so completely exposed her lack of personal refinement and low level of professionalism. I am not the translator who resigned after two weeks, so why should the GM punish an applicant for someone else's mistake? I was not even an employee of the company yet, but was forced to endure the GM's completely irrational displaced anger. At that moment, I could fully understand why that translator did not want to continue working with this GM. With such an emotional GM who takes her anger out on others, anyone would run away as fast as possible; only a masochist would stay.

Regarding professional translation standards, I do not recommend working at Amway at all, for the following reasons:

1. TM is not used for routine translation work. The workflow is close to the most primitive form of manual labor in the translation industry, and is extremely outdated by industry standards.

2. The GM emphasized that certain terms have fixed translations and must not be mistranslated three times in a row. (I could not help laughing when I heard this.) A matter that could clearly be resolved with a glossary in the TM was instead handled by the GM through emotional threats, explicitly stating, “If you get it wrong three times, I will get angry.” The GM clearly only knows how to criticize others and lacks the ability to self-reflect, making me seriously question how capable and efficient her leadership could be.

3. The GM claimed to place great importance on translation quality and said she would personally review and revise translations, yet she could not answer at all how many words a full-time translator should complete at minimum each day. During the interview, however, she emphasized that there would be urgent translations that needed to be completed.

For experienced translators, this is absolutely a warning sign that should set off alarm bells. The scope and workload are not clearly defined. Anyone considering applying for this translation position should be mentally prepared, because you will have no idea how much work will be waiting for you.

Would completing 3,000 words of legal documents and 3,000 words of product descriptions in one day really represent the same workload?

4. The translation content includes marketing documents, training materials, professional nutrition documents, official correspondence, and legal documents, with both Chinese-to-English and English-to-Chinese translation required. Yet the offered salary is only 45,000, with labor and health insurance premiums deducted separately. Whether the salary-to-workload ratio is reasonable is for fellow translators to judge.

5. Throughout the process, I felt that the GM considered Amway to be a major brand with plenty of leverage to be selective about employees. In reality, it is merely a direct-selling company. Even if the work includes legal documents and nutrition- and medical-related documents, translators hoping to develop careers in legal translation or medical and nutrition translation should not harbor excessive expectations. Clients or employers in the legal and medical fields will only frown upon seeing a direct-selling brand and will certainly not view it favorably.

Translators seeking to build experience should think carefully before applying.

In summary: I originally submitted my résumé because I use Amway nutritional products, and the opportunity to work within its system seemed worth considering. After the interview, however, I was deeply disappointed by the stark conflict between the partner-family corporate culture promoted in Amway's marketing and my actual interaction with the GM at the administrative center. I feel deep disgust and revulsion toward this hypocritical corporate culture, and have decided never again to purchase Amway nutritional products or use products from its affiliated brands.

Assessment of the person responsible for internal management at Amway's headquarters: In translation work, the supervisor cannot even clearly explain the workload, manages issues that could be resolved with an internal standardized terminology list through emotional threats, and irrationally takes her anger out on applicants. Do you think you can trust such a supervisor to treat you well?