Month: February 2025

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.

It’s just a translator.

Some years ago I was interpreting in depositions at the US Consulate in Osaka. It happened that the opposing side’s interpreter, who would be interpreting for the attorney examining the deponent, was engaged rather suddenly and was not yet on the list of persons to be allowed into the Consulate. He was being made to wait on the first floor while they tried to work through the administrative problems to let him in.

Since the deposition couldn’t proceed without a lead interpreter (I was the check interpreter), we took a break. In the waiting area outside the deposition room, the deposition-taking attorney was at a window discussing the problem.

“Is it an attorney downstairs waiting to enter?” a Consulate official asked him.

“No, it’s just a translator (sic)” was the reply, referring to the interpreter.

The mistake of characterizing an interpreter as a translator aside, this makes me wonder how the attorney intended to examine the Japanese deponent if the person who is “just a translator” was stuck downstairs, waiting among huddled masses of visa applicants (mostly Brazilians that day, as I recall), yearning to breath free or whatever they intended to do in the US.

The interpreter in question is well-known and had spent many more years perfecting his professional skills than did the youngish above-noted attorney.

To Don’t Lists

Although I have often been fond of making “to do” lists with items I check off as I do them, I have recently come to see the value in making “to don’t” lists.

You simply make a list of things, including things that you should do, but that you know in your heart you will not do. Then you proceed not to do them. You can check them off as you don’t do them, but that is optional.

It is best to keep a record of your to undone to don’t items, because you will need to include these in your next to don’t list, thereby avoiding accidentally doing some of them. Consistency is a virtue.

This is an elegant solution to a longstanding problem. You enjoy a sense of achievement without having to expend any effort or spend any time.