NG Cheuk-Pan Derrick || BEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering || Euroil Industrial and Trade Co. Ltd., Hungary

Through a two-month internship arranged by IAESTE, Ng Cheuk-Pan Derrick, a Mechanical Engineering student, joined Euroil Industrial and Trade Co. Ltd., a petroleum engineering company in Hungary with over 18 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. Apart from the engineering-related tasks, Derrick also took up the role of assisting the company to explore the China market.

As a leading oil and pipeline design company in Hungary, the company sees the potential of the Chinese market and is interested in doing business in China. Being the only Chinese person in the company, Derrick landed the mission of exploring the Chinese market. This additional assignment offered Derrick the opportunity to utilise not only his engineering skills and knowledge but also his language and communication skills.

“My very first task was to translate the company’s homepage from English to Chinese so that business operators in China could have access to Euroil and obtain information without a language barrier. Since I have never received any professional translation training, the job was hard for me,” he says. Derrick translated the website sentence by sentence into Chinese to complete the job. “I did treasure this experience. I am more confident about my language ability. Besides, through the translation, I gained a better understanding about the company background,” Derrick says.

In addition, Derrick also helped to collect and translate some articles about the engineering industry in China from Chinese into English in order to help the company understand the Chinese market and search for possible business partners. Derrick benefited from getting a more comprehensive picture of the Chinese engineering industry.

Stepping up the effort

Having gained more trust from his superior, Derrick started to search for Chinese engineering companies that potentially could be the targets for Euroil as suitable partners. I first needed to understand the basic criteria and essential attributes my boss required. Derrick also had to draft business letters in both Chinese and English on behalf of the company to invite possible business partners to collaboration. “However, without any experience of writing proper business letters in Chinese, I needed to find references on the Internet,” he says.

“I realised that you need to be well-equipped with different skills for all kinds of demands in the workplace. As an engineering major, communication skills are as important as solid technical training. Therefore we should always keep enhancing our competence.”

“I am glad that I managed to start some groundwork for Euroil to explore the China market. My communication and writing skills have been elevated to another level and I learnt how to communicate appropriately and effectively with colleagues and my superiors. In fact, I believe I have achieved more than I expected,” Derrick says.