Areum (Ally) Seo (서아름 / ソ アルム) is currently working as a freelance translator/reviewer for Korean, English, and Japanese at Lionbridge Technologies, Inc., TransPerfect, MoGi Group, and Flitto Inc., and Dragonbaby. She is also a freelance in-house interpreter/translator at kakaopiccoma Corp., and an interpreter at AlphaSights. Before then, she worked as Project Manager at Amazon Japan, Publicis Sapient, Flitto Inc., Defined.ai, Lionbridge Translation Units (TUs), and Social Media Strategist/Analyst at relativ*.
Her expertise lies in linguistics, technical documents, gaming (UI, patch notes, marketplace, in-game conversation), customer services, marketing, and entertainment.
She was born in Seoul. She moved to Tokyo as a MEXT scholar where she studied as a research student at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in 2009. She completed her master’s degree in Japanese language education there, and her master’s thesis was entitled “On the creation of writing assessment standards for intermediate-level Japanese learners’ essays in the field of Japanese language education – based on the JF Standard.” She began her Ph.D. in 2012 and finished her coursework in 2015 at the same university. 
She has taught Japanese as a foreign language at the Center for Japanese Language, Waseda University from 2013 to 2015 and from 2016 to 2017. She also taught Korean at the Japan College of Foreign Languages from 2014 to 2015.
She is currently based in Seoul, South Korea, and has a permanent resident visa in Japan. 
Education
  2012-2015      Ph.D. ABD                      Language and Cultural Studies, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
  2010-2012      M.A.                                Applied Linguistics, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
  2009-2010     Research Student      Japanese Linguistics, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
  2005-2006    Exchange Student      English Literature, Ritsumeikan University
  2003-2007     B.A.                                 English Literature/Japanese Interpretation for Tourism, Kyung Hee University
Awards and Scholarships
  2018                Customer Obsession Award, Amazon Japan G.K. 
  2012-2015     Grant for Excellent Graduate Schools
                            The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, and Technology (MEXT) of Japan
  2009-2015    Japanese Government (MEXT) Scholarship
                            The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, and Technology (MEXT) of Japan


Research Projects Participated
  2012-2015  Research Assistant in the Grant-In-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKEN) (B) Comprehensive Study on Language Education Policies and Cross-Linguistic Proficiency Evaluation Methods for Asian Languages (Principal researcher: Nobuo Tomimori)
  2012-2015  Research Assistant in the World Language and Society Education Centre, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (Principal researcher: Nobuo Tomimori)
Completed Courses and Certificates
  Google Project Management: Project Planning: Putting It All Together (License B776CDB7BVUU) Coursera, May 2023 
  ​​​​​​​Google Project Management: Project Initiation: Starting a Successful Project (License XR53WH2L83GY) Coursera, April 2023
  Google Project Management: Foundations of Project Management (License UZGGFEA9NHDS) Coursera, February 2023
  DevOps on AWS: Specialization (License WFBYX7KTRWAU), Coursera, October 2022
  DevOps on AWS: Operate and Monitor (License 7TD7LSH2W9XH), Coursera, October 2022
  DevOps on AWS: Release and Deploy (License MTNLY26DRHGN), Coursera, October 2022
  DevOps on AWS: Code, Build, and Test (License 72MFKSR4G8B9), Coursera, September 2022
  AWS Cloud Essentials (License Z55J7AGSXHYB), Coursera, September 2022
  SDL Trados Studio 2021 New Features, SDL, October 2021
  Google Analytics Individual Qualification, Google, August 2020
  Advanced Google Analytics, Google, August 2020
  Google Analytics for Beginners, Google, August 2020
  SDL Post Editing, SDL, February 2020
  Budgeting and Scheduling Projects (License 7BMRHLK9KJ6H), University of California, Irvine, Coursera, March 2019
  Initiating and Planning Projects (License 567ALP8QBG4D), University of California, Irvine, Coursera, March 2019
  The Data Scientist’s Toolbox (License LQUEM2RHVGGR), Johns Hopkins University, Coursera, January 2019
  Python for Everybody Specialization (License DSKSD8JLCS72), University of Michigan, Coursera, October 2018
  Introduction to Data Analysis, Codecademy, April 2018
  Korean Teacher Training Course, Seoul National University Extension College, September to December 2012
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