Author: William Lise

Long-term (40-plus years) resident of Japan. Former electrical engineer and have been translating and interpreting for over four decades.

Pass the puke bucket: Microsoft’s LinkedIn rolls along as a platform for charlatans.

[I posted the following to LinkedIn yesterday, March 3, 2025, and it was quickly shadow-banned by Microsoft.]

This morning Microsoft’s LinkedIn algorithm thought (although it can’t think) I would be interested in a post (an ad, actually) from a self-styled LinkedIn ghostwriter claiming to have clients paying him 1000s of dollars a month to “grow their LinkedIn accounts” (totally meaningless, of course), saying he got thousands of connections for himself using an AI ghostwriting tool he developed. He claims that not only does the AI tool write viral, engaging posts for you on LinkedIn, it also generates ideas about what to post based on your business. It sounds like it tells you what to write.

This type of tool is best used by people who have nothing say and don’t know how to say it. Professionals know what they need to say and can say it.

This nonsense demonstrates quite well what Microsoft’s LinkedIn platform has become, a tool for charlatans working the aisles of desperate people who believe that LinkedIn “success” will save them.

I’m not surprised that this ad got hundreds of comments requesting the AI tool freebie trial. The wretched masses are yearning to get connections. Go for it. 

In case people are wondering, the ghostwriter is young and has a profile that doesn’t indicate any qualifications or experience; no education shown and no experience in organizations other than the business he runs, and its website doesn’t have a physical address and doesn’t even name him. You need to be really dumb to not realize what that suggests.

Charlatans selling to the huddled masses yearning to have connections and have “LinkedIn success” have become the norm on Microsoft’s LinkedIn platform.

And I guess the blocking of this garbage from your LinkedIn feed is left up to the unfortunate recipients.

LinkedIn has become pretty much meaningless, unless you are working the aisles of desperate users or you can’t resist the opportunity to say that you are excited, thrilled, or honored to announce something.

For my part, I am annoyed to announce that Microsoft has effectively removed any value from its LinkedIn platform.

Will the Czech interpreter raise their right hand?

One day interpreting in a deposition in which a deponent from a Japanese company was to be examined by a US attorney, the US official came into the room to administer the oaths as is the normal practice. We were all introducing ourselves and, when my turn came, I indicated that I was the “check interpreter.” It is customary (and almost always the case) that a Japanese/English interpreted deposition is attended by a lead interpreter and a check interpreter, the lead interpreter doing just what the position indicates, and the check interpreter listening to the interpreting and offering any corrections that they feel necessary.

When it was my turn to be sworn in, the Embassy official, whom I had never had the occasion to meet, reading partially from his cheat sheet and apparently filling in as he thought necessary, turned to me and said:

“Do you solemnly swear that you know the English and the Czech languages, and that you will faithfully interpret the questions in English into the Czech language, and that further you wil…”

It turned out that he was new on the job. It was a bit of comedy relief before a stressful day of interpreting between two people, one who wanted to ask questions and the other who was not necessarily cooperative.

One algorithm leads to another.

[Originally posted on LinkedIn on January 16, 2025]

Disclaimer: I don’t have a LinkedIn account to find clients or look for a job, since my client demographic is essentially absent from LinkedIn, and I am not on LinkedIn looking for a job.

Now, with that out of the way:

The often-heard claim that LinkedIn is a business-related platform is delusional if we are talking about people seeking work.

There are people looking for employment on LinkedIn, but all that Microsoft’s LinkedIn is doing is using their algorithm to give users the opportunity to face yet other algorithms, operated by what they think are potential employers.

They will need first to game the Microsoft LinkedIn algorithm and then will further need to game a hiring algorithm to even get an interview, which apparently is a rare occurrence.

Those games are generally meaningless, and desperation and delusion are the only reasons many people hang onto LinkedIn, which is demonstrably just another social media platform, owned and run by Microsoft for much the same reasons Zuckerberg owns and runs Facebook and the reasons Musk owns and runs X. And we know those reasons, don’t we? Enough said.

Lise, please don’t interpret this.

I was interpreting at a Japanese law firm one day in a meeting between my Japanese manufacturer client, their US attorney (also my client), and the Japanese manufacturer’s local Japanese attorney. It was a meeting regarding US litigation between the Japanese company and a European competitor in the US.

The meeting was going ostensibly well for about an hour, when suddenly the Japanese attorney turns to me, saying “Lise-san, please don’t interpret this.”

He then addresses his Japanese client (also my Japanese client) and launches into:

“What’s happening here is that both you and the opposing party are being manipulated by your Jew attorneys, so …”

The term for Jew and Jewish in Japanese is yudaya, obviously fully understandable as a slur when used adjectivally before the word for attorney in either its English or Japanese form.

That aside, did the Japanese attorney stupidly think that, by telling me not to interpret, he would keep his antisemitism a secret from my client? Or did he just want to avoid annoying his US attorney at least during the meeting while insulting him as he sat there?.

I needed to travel with the attorney after that meeting, and he let me know that he was well aware of what has transpired already as we rode the elevator down to the ground floor after the meeting.

I mentioned to him that, upon hearing this slur, I was toying with the idea of letting drop in the meeting that I am a Jew (although I am not), but discarded the idea, as I could imagine getting into an ugly and time-consuming debate with the jerk about his lack of civility and common sense about what is and is not proper behavior in a business meeting.

I am happy to say that this Japanese attorney was never my client, and that the US attorney remained my client after that.

Don’t interpret, just translate.

I was interpreting one day in a deposition in the US Embassy and needed to make a comment on the record about why I had interpreted a certain term in English the way I did. Everyone appeared to understand and agree with the comment, but one of the attorneys piped up to say “Please don’t interpret, just translate.”

Both the interpreters in the room had to hold back from laughing. The attorney was demonstrating one of the reasons people outside the interpreting/translation tent often confuse the terms and call an interpreter a translator. I have often corrected people when they get these terms wrong, but I think we translators and interpreters (and the rare individuals do both translation and interpreting between JA and EN) might consider admitting defeat in the interpreter/translator battle.