Author: William Lise

Long-term (49-plus years) resident of Japan. Former electrical engineer and have been translating and interpreting for over four decades.

New LinkedIn-Based Business Plan

This business plan is predicated on a move to a Global South location, from which you can post on LinkedIn to advertise your coaching regarding:

  • how to succeed on LinkedIn (without feeling the need to explain what that might mean);
  • the differences between AI models (using pretty graphics to demonstrate the value you provide by bringing something that is obvious and easy-to-find elsewhere to the forefront in easy-to-understand terms);
  • how to prompt AI models (presented as the essential key to survival and triumphing over your rivals);
  • how translation is not the replacement of words in one language with those of another (a strawman argument presented in the hope that readers won’t realize that people with real money to spend on translation already know that);
  • how human translators are still needed because they understand and can bridge cultures (as if any more than a tiny portion of translation that is paid for has any cultural aspects or concerns);
  • how translators need to transform themselves to take on the new tasks, which it turns out are mostly training AI or fixing AI output at rates that you would only be happy with after you moved to and accustomed yourself to your new home in the Global South);
  • how to translate from any language to any language using AI;
  • how to do “digital marketing;” or
  • any combination of the above, preferably not promoted in the same post.

Then you just need to wait for the engagement and the money to roll in. Ain’t LinkedIn great? For what, you ask?

Microsoft’s LinkedIn, where fake is rewarded and real is punished.

There are signs that intentionally abandoning your true persona in posts on LinkedIn in an effort to game the Microsoft algorithm, which shadow-bans posts it deems undesirable—one unforgivable sin is negativism about Microsoft or AI—can work to reduce the effect of shadow-banning. For me, however, that amounts to being someone else.

As Oscar Wilde said, “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

And I will say “I’m going to be myself, because the personal cost of being someone else to game a mindless algorithm designed by tech broligarchs is much too high.”

The Coaching Pandemic

I have often been targeted on Microsoft’s LinkedIn by ads for and posts by people purporting to be able to coach users on how to be “successful.”

There is seldom much elaboration, other than to say they’ll teach you how to get lots of connections and build your network. I guess there are people who value that. I’m not one of them, as I am active in the real world.

I now see more and more translators who have gone into the coaching business, selling their potential colleague translator clients the secrets of success. Some of them present themselves as “founders,” which appears to have lots of value to some people. This often self-applied title often just announces that the title holder is seeking to curate their persona without the need for any discernible substance. But I digress.

When things go bad for your personal business activities, some people turn to taking money from others for teaching them how to succeed.
There are a number of translators who long ago turned to coaching, an activity that can turn into a one-on-one cult religion, depending upon the gullibility of their clients. The number appears to be growing, and it’s now being bolstered by translators in the global south, sometimes regarding European target languages.

This is the world of Microsoft’s LinkedIn, where substance takes a back seat to fantasy.