Friday is All-Hands Day! How GOT Provides Language Support #メルカリな日々

Hi! I’m Ishikawa from the PR Team.
Here at Mercari, we hold an all-hands meeting every Friday. Every week when I walk into that room, that’s when it starts feeling like Friday—and that means it’s almost the weekend!

These all-hands meetings are run mostly in Japanese, so of course, we need to provide language support to our global members so they aren’t left out.

How, you ask? That’s where our Global Operations Team (GOT) comes in! GOT works to promote diversity within the company and tear down both language and cultural barriers. One of their duties is to provide translation and interpretation support, and one part of that is their language support system for our all-hands meetings.

Let’s step into our Cafespace and…wait, what’s that booth in the back…?

This cool thing you see here is our simultaneous interpretation booth! Today’s interpreters from GOT are @json and @gabe. They broadcast their real-time English interpretation through a cloud conference app to our global members, who bring headphones to the meeting to listen along. Plus: this booth is collapsible, so rather than taking up space in the office all week, we keep it stored away and only set it up when we need it for these all-hands meetings.

So, what about the presentations themselves? All slides used in the meeting are available in both Japanese and English! GOT translates all the slides in advance, and when the meeting rolls around, we project both languages side by side. (It’s a little hard to see, but the English is on the left and the Japanese is on the right.)

But wait, there’s more! Some of our global members would rather follow along through text, not audio, so in addition to the interpretation, GOT provides real-time translation on Google Docs. Accommodating everyone’s preferences—talk about professional!

Every week, around 6 or 7 GOT members write the English translation of what’s being said into this doc in real time. This doubles as English minutes of the meeting that can be used later. This typing method is popular with global members studying Japanese! GOT also translates questions submitted through our internal Q&A system on the spot, as well as the answers that follow.

At Mercari, all important information is communicated in both Japanese and English. GOT provides translation and interpretation support whenever necessary to make that possible.

As the number of global members increases, Mercari is working towards a seamless work environment, where everyone can work to their fullest potential without any barriers. Language support is just one of GOT’s many activities—keep an eye out for more Mercan articles about the team in the future!

See you again for more articles about #メルカリな日々, and enjoy the weekend!