Author: William Lise

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

Entitlement and Linguistic Imperialism of Foreigners Wanting to Come to Japan

My recent (but now terminated) participation on LinkedIn provided me a glimpse into how some foreigners—particularly foreigners who are having language-related employment problems in Japan or who want to come here to work but haven’t yet made it—view Japan and its “language problem.”

A complaint I often hear is that it is unfair for Japanese companies to require foreign employees to be Japanese capable. Some foreigners cite the requirement to pass a Japanese language proficiency test as being discriminatory. After all, they are highly educated, speak English, and have extremely valuable technical skills that don’t require Japanese ability, right?

I am not talking about farm or factory workers brokered into Japan from Asia, but rather people seeking work in jobs that call for a high level of education and skill; jobs such as programmer, but physically in a Japanese company, not on a farm in Tochigi or a factory in Aichi.

To my ears, the above type of comment is evidence of both entitlement and linguistic imperialism.

Where did these people get the notion that Japanese companies are obligated to treat them any differently from other employees?

I have spent a few years in Japan (about 50, actually), have had professional interaction with hundreds of companies, and have yet to encounter a Japanese company that operates in English here, or that would consider a foreign employee in Japan incapable of communicating in Japanese to be a full member of their team.

Surprise! The language of Japan is Japanese, and almost everybody here, including me, thinks that’s just fine.

The people voicing displeasure at the language requirement would, as employees, be required to interact on a daily basis with Japanese employees, most of whom are not proficient in English, and that needs to be done in Japanese. Interacting with other employees is part of the job. Without Japanese, a foreigner will not be fully functional.

These disgruntled foreigners need to remember that Japanese companies are made not of computer programs, databases, and hardware, but of carbon-based humans who communicate in Japanese. I suppose an argument could be made that the foreigners could work remotely, but then they don’t need to be in Japan, and that would burst the come-to-Japan balloon that many of these people are floating.

Why don’t Japanese speak English, some might wonder? Well, the short answer is that they don’t need to.

Additionally, although Japan never succeeded at conquering enough countries for long enough to force their language down the throats of many non-Japanese in a lasting manner, the situation with English is quite different. The success of anglophone incursions into countries and linguistic lives all over the globe has fostered a cohort of native English speakers who think that English is a given.

Many they think that having to learn Japanese places them at an unfair disadvantage with respect to native Japanese speakers. Fair or not, they are correct about the disadvantage and just need to suck it up.

Have not much to say? Create content instead.

Not so many years ago, before problems were reinvented as issues, services as solutions, and jobs as roles, people who had something to say would sometimes write those things.

These days, people increasingly identify as “content creators,” but some of this trendy content creation strikes me as aiming to obviate the need to have something to say. Just create “content” instead; it’ll make you “stand out.” And some of the people identifying as content creators don’t seem to have much to say, or to write, or to “create.”

The American Translators Association a short while ago promoted a webinar aimed at helping translators write translation content. Well, at least their choice of the verb write is refreshing. For members, it was just USD 45 for the hour-long webinar.

The webinar was billed as helping translators find what topics to write about. Don’t they know? Is that really necessary? We are often told to write about what we know. Does that mean…?

Perhaps it is aimed at translators who have so much to say they cannot decide what to write about, or perhaps it’s for those who have nothing to say. I’ll let you guess which.

This “translation content” is described as giving you visibility and as being good for marketing. Perhaps, but it sounds like participants are going to be told things they should have been able to figure out on their own. Perhaps more importantly, just who is the “translation content” intended for?

It was only USD 45 for the hour-long webinar, but with no indicated limit on the number of participants, if you get my drift. Perhaps ATA should run a webinar for USD 45 to teach participants how to run webinars for USD 45. That might be a better strategy than creating…uh, writing content.

Expanded Thoughts on My “LinkedIn Experience”

Executive Summary:  For any freelancer (and not limited to translators) not totally locked into sitting in front of their computer and hoping work arrives, LinkedIn is as useless as tits on a bull. In fact, even (and perhaps particularly) if you are locked into that strategy, LinkedIn is pretty much useless.

As I reported elsewhere, I have trashed my LinkedIn account. In the report of my leaving, I cited just a few annoyances with LinkedIn. Some others, including why it was of no value to me specifically (and to people doing in businesses similar to mine) are presented here

Some uselessness of LinkedIn not directly attributable to Microsoft:

  • Usage of LinkedIn by Japanese individuals and entities is tiny compared to the anglophone world, hence the small number of JA-EN translators I encountered there. One of the reasons I rejoined LinkedIn was because of the lack of online venues with active interaction between Japanese/English translators. LinkedIn did not fill that need.
  • Almost all of the hundreds of connection requests I received (and almost universally ignored) were from people in the Global South, some of them involved in activities not easily discernible from their profiles, but many being translators. Surely they saw my profile and company name and erroneously thought I had translation work to give them; I do not.

Uselessness of LinkedIn directly attributable to Microsoft and its business model:

  • Countless ads for AI systems.
  • Countless ads for jobs training AI systems by annotating data.
  • Many ads for training you to achieve “AI success” by learning how to prompt AI.
  • Incessant promotion by Microsoft itself of AI and AI promoters.
  • Phoniness and bluster are everywhere and rewarded by Microsoft with reach that leads to engagement. These are characterisitically from people claiming to be the best things since sliced bread and also fighting against tremendous odds and never losing. I feel some of these people have serious self-confidence problems, but I digress.
  • AI-generated posts clearly uploaded to farm engagement and often about topics totally unrelated to anything the poster’s profile might indicate that they do when they are not posting AI slop.

Uselessness of LinkedIn attributable to general users:

  • A large portion of users present themselves as consultants, coaches, and trainers.
  • Countless formulaic posts, many starting with the overworked expression of thrill, excitement, or honor about just about anything and everything. They often end with silliness such as “Hi, I’m Danny Deluder, and if you need…”
  • An increasing number of posts that include images stolen and unlawfully republished, probably by people who will conveniently tell you that the image was on the Internet, so it was “public domain.” These people should be beaten about the head and shoulders with a heavy shovel, but I digress.
  • Account owners who reply to every comment to a post they make using AI, easily discoverable from not only the vapid text, but also the lengths of the responses, the dispersion of which often no more than one or two words. It’s as if they told an AI to reply in N words.
  • Incessant posts from “LinkedIn coaches,” purporting to coach you in achieving “LinkedIn success.”
  • Countless posts by people self-identifying as

Uselessness and annoyance of LinkedIn attributable to translator users:

  • Many desperate and delusional translators chanting the “culture mantra,” which claims that, because translation requires an understanding of cultural nuances, humans will not be replaced by AI. These people apparently don’t know or want to know that most translation that is purchased is not affected by culture. Bless their hearts, but I have given up on trying to educate these people.
  • Ads by translators working the aisles of desperate translators and looking to take money from them for coaching.

Annoyance of a specific group related to business in Japan:

  • There is a Japan business group that has a few members who know about Japan and make sensible comments based on the real world, but almost all of the many thousands of members (over 15,000 if I remember correctly) are silent, and the group appears to be generally populated by non-Japanese looking to do business in Japan or, in many cases, just get a cover story to be able to come and live in Japan.
  • Because of the above demographic, there are Japanese members of the group selling services to foreigners trying to acquire visas or residence status in Japan.
  • Again, because of the above demographic, there are complaints that Japan is not fair to foreigners, including some comments about the unfairness of requiring proficiency in Japanese to gain employment. I will write about that particular silly entitlement at another time.

For translators specifically, I can say that, with translation quickly winding down as a realistic activity for most freelancers, the type of clients the few survivable translators will need to acquire are not going to be acquired by having a LinkedIn account or posting there. Many more—and much different—things are going to be required.