This Week: Course registration & ADUS meeting deadline; Part-time data annotation & translation work opportunity; Mid-Autumn Lantern Festival
Fall 2021 Course Spotlight
Concentration Announcements
Interviews & Course Registration Signatures
 
All undergraduate concentrators and prospective concentrators must schedule an appointment with the undergraduate advising staff before the course registration deadline this Thursday, August 26th.
 
Please schedule a meeting by e-mailing your Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies directly.
 
ADUS for First-years/Sophomores:
Jesse LeFebvre | jesselefebvre@g.harvard.edu
Meet with ADUS for Sophomores/First-year students. E-mail to set up Zoom appointment, or attend office hours on Zoom (https://harvard.zoom.us/j/95635688307)
Tuesdays 1:00pm-2:00pm | Wednesdays 11:00am-12:00pm

ADUS for Juniors:
Meet with ADUS for Juniors. E-mail to set up Zoom appointment.
Office hours: Wednesdays 3:00pm-4:00pm | Thursdays 11:00am-12:00pm
 
ADUS for Seniors:
Jonathan Thumas | jthumas@g.harvard.edu
Meet with ADUS for Seniors. E-mail to set up Zoom appointment.
 

Secondary Field
If you are interested in advising for Secondary Field, please contact Nicole Escolas at eas@fas.harvard.edu.
 
EAS 91r Independent Study
If you are interested in an independent study, please contact Nicole Escolas at eas@fas.harvard.edu to fill out the administrative paperwork. You can contact the faculty member with whom you wish to work directly.

Tutorial Staff
 
Director of Undergraduate Studies:
Professor Melissa McCormick
2 Divinity Ave. #219
p: (617) 496-2276
Office hours: Tuesdays 1:30pm-3:00pm by appointment

The Office of East Asian Studies will open for the fall semester on August 16th, 2021. Prior to that, Nicole and Naia are available via e-mail or phone M-F 7:00am-4:30pm. Please call us at 617-495-8365, or e-mail eas@fas.harvard.edu or naia_poyer@fas.harvard.edu.
Events This Week
Tuesday, August 24

Tuesday, August 24, 11:00 p.m. (EDT)
Historicizing Disaster Risk Management: The Ecology of Mt. Isarog and its Environs
Panelists:
Jade d’Alpoim Guedes, University of California, San Diego
Patrick Roberts, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Grace Tesoro-Barretto, Archaeological Studies Program, University of the Philippines
Roland Fletcher, University of Sydney
Moderator: Peter Lape, University of Washington


Friday, August 27

Friday, August 27, 5:00 p.m. - Saturday, August 28, 11:00 p.m.
Witness the display of thousands of lanterns and indulge in delicious foods from a great selection of local food vendors. Live entertainment provided by local artists and performers. There will be lawn games, crafting activities, cooking workshops, and various drawings and contests.
Free admission, registration required.
In-person event: Randolph Ice Arena, 240 North St., Randolph, MA
Work Opportunities
Data Annotator and Translator, CJK languages (hourly employment via Workforce Logiq)
Location & hours: fully remote, part-time (20+ hours/week), partial flex time
Compensation: $25/hr

Moveworks is a Series C start-up in Silicon Valley that has developed a powerful AI-based chatbot which resolves enterprise employee issues autonomously and instantly using advanced Natural Language Understanding.
 
Overview 
Data annotation entails categorizing, tagging, labeling, and evaluating textual information. This role is a blend of data annotation and translation. 
Below are typical tasks you would do in this role:

  • Grading the quality of algorithmic responses to user queries
  • Tagging salient information in user-entered text
  • Identifying mentions of common software titles and other named entities in support tickets in IT and other enterprise domains
  • Categorizing support tickets by user intent using a complex multi-dimensional taxonomy
  • Evaluating the performance of an AI chatbot
  • Giving human feedback to MT (machine translation) algorithms
  • Evaluating and commenting on the accuracy of language detection machine learning algorithms
  • Search relevance evaluation
  • Intent categorization using a complex, taxonomy of intents
  • Translation (bi-directional)!
 
Expert fluency in English and Chinese OR Japanese OR Korean is required. Appreciation for language nuances born out of bi-directional written translation experience and/or academic study is necessary for this job. We are especially interested in how you approach the level of formality in the source and the target language, as well as how attuned you are to issues surrounding the language register in translating instructions for users.
 
Some attributes of successful candidates are:
 
  • Cultural awareness
  • Passion for the study of languages with all its applications
  • Attention to detail coupled with the ability to see the big picture
  • Reliable performance on repetitive tasks (we like to think of our tasks as “non-boring and repetitive”)
  • An analytical mindset
  • The ability to form and apply mental models consistently
  • Accuracy at speed
  • Motivation to meet recurrent deadlines on rolling tasks
  • Ability to explain your thought process and decision making
  • Willingness to put yourself in the shoes of others and empathetic understanding of the needs of users
  • Proactive self-starter capable of focused independent work
  • Adept at remote collaboration (Slack, ZOOM, Google suite)
  • Excited to learn and improve
  • Curious and creative
   
Selection process: successful completion of a take-home challenge (3 exercises in Google Forms, all in English) is a prerequisite for being advanced to the interviewing stage. Interviews are conducted via ZOOM.
Hiring manager: Natasha Klein-Atlas, https://www.linkedin.com/in/klein-atlas/ - please submit your resume and cover letter to natasha@moveworks.ai with the subject “Data Annotation and Translation, CJK languages”
Events by Institution
Asia Center Virtual Programs
Experience Harvard Asia Center programming through current and archived digital exhibitions, as well as podcast talk series and author conversation videos! Click here to access virtual programs offered through the Asia Center.


Left: Photo from "Elegy to a Uyghur Dreamscape" (ongoing virtual exhibition)
Student Groups
*Please be aware that student groups may have become inactive during our time off campus. If you are aware of any updates to a group on this list, please let us know by e-mailing naia_poyer@fas.harvard.edu.