1. If your translations and work performance are good, you get a raise every few months, and after staying for several years, the increases become very noticeable.
2. The company has very high hiring standards and is considered a high-quality company in the industry. It frequently wins bids over many translation agencies, which is very effective for developing translation quality.
3. You can work on many types of translation projects. Even after leaving, I continued taking on projects from the company, so it is suitable for people who want to take on freelance work over the long term.
You need to be comfortable with translating for long periods of time. Although you sometimes discuss things with colleagues, translation work ultimately requires you to constantly face a computer.
None
1. Spent an hour taking an intelligence/aptitude test, but it was unclear how it related to the job, so it felt rather pointless.
2. Took a translation test using an on-site desktop computer, but the computer was so old that it crashed halfway through. Even though it was a timed test, no extra time was provided, so the whole thing felt WTF?
3. Previously applied for a part-time translator position and received an acceptance notice, but then never heard anything and was never assigned any work. So what was the point of accepting me? To collect applicants’ personal information?
Overall, the interview experience was unpleasant.
The interview process for this position was divided into two stages. The first stage consisted of an aptitude test and the translation of six passages. After passing, applicants proceeded to the second-stage test, which required them to go to Liyan Translation Agency to take a one-hour intelligence test and a one-hour translation test (two Chinese-to-English translations and two English-to-Chinese translations). Liyan’s online reviews were not bad, which was one of the reasons I decided to apply. However, the actual application experience was rather unpleasant. First, Liyan seemed to place nearly as much emphasis on aptitude and intelligence tests as on professional ability. Regardless of whether this approach is meaningful, what I found dissatisfying was that the questions in Liyan’s intelligence test had apparently been directly converted from Simplified Chinese into Traditional Chinese, with no clear licensing information. Therefore, it was impossible to know whether the test was a legally licensed intelligence test.
Second, the experience of the translation test in the second stage was quite unpleasant. For both Chinese-to-English and English-to-Chinese translation, the passages not only lacked context but also came from specialized documents, including fields related to control engineering and architecture. Of course, the areas covered by the translation documents had not been disclosed in advance, but only fifteen minutes was allotted for each passage. That amount of time was barely enough to verify technical terms, let alone translate a passage without context. In addition, Liyan’s email stated that applicants could bring their own computers to participate in the test, but this was not the case on site, so I had to endure using an unfamiliar keyboard layout during the translation. Finally, Liyan also mentioned that a translator would observe the translation process on site. In fact, the translator only came in twice during the one-hour session, staying for approximately five to ten minutes each time. This inevitably made me wonder why it was necessary to spend an entire hour conducting the translation test on site.