more prepping

The interview that I’ll be having in Seoul next week is for an English language editing and technical writing position at a computer technology firm. Judging by the English language version of their website, they definitely need me (or if not me, a native English speaker in that role). Their website was obviously translated into English by a non-native speaker, and while the translator did a fairly good job, there are numerous mistakes with articles, helping verbs, and second-vs-third person verbs – as well as the occasional phrase that was obviously produced by an electronic translator. There’s also the Korean habit of using ridiculous run-on sentences (which is apparently a normal thing to do in Korean, but which just seems absurd in English). The company is planning to begin expanding into the English-speaking market… which is why they’re looking into hiring a native English speaker.

I decided that in order to show them what I can do, it would be a good idea to take a section of their website and edit it. I edited one section from their website (which came to twelve pages in Microsoft Word), which I have printed out and saved to my flash drive.

Today, I received an email from the company’s director (one of the people with whom I’ve been corresponding over the past month or so), saying that during the interview they’d like me to look over ‘one or two pages’ of their English text, and to edit or correct them as needed, in order for them to see what I can do. It felt pretty good to be able to write back and say that not only would that not be a problem, but that I had already edited a specific section of their website as an example of the skills I have to offer.