LinkedIn is filled with people who have hyper-curated personas, and also people who want to take money to coach other people so they can better curate their phony personas.
Authenticity is apparently a thing of the past.
Author: William Lise
Long-term (49-plus years) resident of Japan. Former electrical engineer and have been translating and interpreting for over four decades.
Entitled Foreigners Looking into Japan from the Outside
It appears that Japan is going to require or is considering requiring applicants for some specific type of working residence status to have passed JLPT level N2.
This has numerous foreigners up in arms and vociferous about this move. How dare Japan discriminate against foreigners, some are saying. Some of these people are in Japan already and might not have checked their foreigner entitlement at the door when they entered; other wannabe disgruntled foreigners on the outside looking in, hoping to make it to Japan so they can pursue the sushi dream or ramen ecstasy that will bring them.
It appears that the visa status in question is Engineer/Humanities/ International Services (EHI), and that it has been abused by people who acquired that status, but took jobs that did not fall under (but were “below,” the platitude of 職業に貴賤はない aside) the permitted categories.
That abuse aside, if you’re going to work in a company in Japan and have a real job, which is just about a given if you want the government to allow you to live here, do you expect that it is acceptable to be illiterate, deaf, and dumb in Japanese? Foreign companies that operate in English aside, Japanese companies are made up of mostly Japanese people who—surprise!—communicate in Japanese and are not required to be able to interact with a non-Japanese in a foreign language.
These entitled foreigners need to get real, and discard their entitlement. The people complaining are not likely the usual Nishi-Azabu tribe, who work in foreign companies and have a crew of expensive English-speaking subordinates or a company-hired interpreter following them around all day. Rather, they are more likely foreigners who dearly want to live in Japan, but don’t want to “be” in Japan. If they succeed at getting the vaunted EHI visa, they will probably get their wish, at which point they can start complaining about being harassed by the police or refused entry to a bar.
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?