Sluggish Microsoft AI?

It took Microsoft almost 30 minutes recently to start shadow-banning a post I made on its LinkedIn platform, reporting what is happening in the war in Europe, coupled with a common-sense suggestion of what needs to be done (essential, to achieve a solution to the Russian problem, in form of a decisive defeat of Russia and removal of their ability to continue their aggression).

I suppose the shadow-banning is understandable, since Microsoft continues to promote the fantasy that its LinkedIn platform is a useful business platform, rather than what it actually is, just another social media platform, created and operated for the same purpose as other social media platforms.

A company of the stature of Microsoft, however, should speed up its AI-driven shadow-banning so as to more effectively prevent this kind of unpleasant content about the real world from reaching its founder and creator users, who might not be excited, thrilled, or honored to see such stuff.

They might be more interested in turning the page to embark on a new chapter, continuing to elevate their journey and, on the way, opening doors that lead to exciting places in the LinkedIn Phony Kingdom.

I wonder if Microsoft’s AI would have been able to figure out the sarcasm in the above paragraph. Perhaps, but it is irrelevant; Microsoft is basically the same as operators of other social media platforms.

Sorry, my business card is only in Japanese.

One day long ago, when I was the President of the Japan Association of Translators, I attended an event held by the Japan Translation Federation, a group that is for all intents and purposes operated by translation agencies in Japan.

It was mostly a socializing event. The JTF is under the aegis of a Japanese governmental ministry and I was introduced as the head of JAT to a person from that ministry. We exchanged business cards, the side of the mine shown to this person being in Japanese and indicating clearly my position in JAT—a group of translators, rather than translation agencies—and my profession as a translator.

His reaction—after receiving and looking at my business card—was to hand me his card, saying “Please excuse me, my card is only in Japanese.”

This guy was just told I was the head of a translators’ organization in Japan, I was speaking Japanese, and handed him a business card that said the same about me.

At first, I thought to make a quip about this stupidity, then discarded the idea, but ultimately did tell him that “When you are a Japanese-to-English translator, reading Japanese is part of the job. I suspect he didn’t catch the sarcasm.

I wonder whether things have changed much. Many Japanese have been conditioned by trained-bear foreigners on TV here speaking Japanese of a variety, some quite well, but a foreigner translating or even reading Japanese could still be an oddity to some Japanese. Some surely some cling to the belief that Japan and the language spoken by Japanese is so unique it cannot be mastered without having Japanese DNA. Bless their hearts.

How old were you during the war?

I interpreted in a deposition of a senior executive of a major Japanese corporation in connection with patent litigation in the US. Things were going well, until one question from the examining attorney near the end of the allotted time for the deposition.

The question came just after the attorney went back at the end of the deposition to ask about the educational background of the deponent, something that is normally done at the beginning of a deposition. In part of his reply, the Japanese executive indicated that he attended the Army Cadet School just before WW2. This prompted the attorney to ask “So how old were you during the war?”

This was to be a jury trial in a state that is not known for being generous with non-Americans. The attorney was fully aware of that, and I can only imagine that it would be seen as advantageous for the jury to think that the deponent had—or at least was old enough to have had—participated in WW2.

Naturally, the attorney on the defending side justifiably went berserk. Such a question had no bearing on the merits of the case. Getting to watch this kind of provocation and the reactions thereto unfold is arguably a benefit to deposition interpreters. Mostly, though, it is mind-numbingly boring, particularly if the subject matter is something the interpreter is not interested in.

Don’t bother can be good advice.

Some weeks ago on LinkedIn, I made some comments about the lack of translation career opportunities for students of foreign languages, basically because of the adoption of AI to replace professionals in the translation process.

The comment was met with virtual nods of heads by some readers, but one person piped up to say that I discouraging newcomers from entering translation, thereby leaving more work for me. He actually sounded serious. He was chiding me for essentially telling students not to bother, and what’s worse, for personal gain.

Reflecting on that, I recall having a distinct experience of being one time told not to bother and having that be the best advice I could have gotten.

It was at the end of 1975. I had been working in a fiber optics laboratory of Western Electric in Princeton and had just completed the last half of an undergraduate engineering program at night. I had a degree in engineering, but that wasn’t going to lead to anything exciting at the laboratory, where the researchers were PhDs and there was nothing between engineering associate and member of research staff. So, I decided to move on and shift my focus.

I contacted the head of the Japanese department at a nearby university in Philadelphia to see if he would speak with me. He quickly agreed, and what ensued was enlightening. I was already functional in Japanese, and my interaction with him was in Japanese.

I had intended to get an advanced degree in Japanese. His advice was quick, being essentially “Don’t bother.” He explained that, with my already-acquired Japanese ability, I would not be learning any more language in a graduate program. He additionally (in a soft tone, not to be heard by several of his students in the room at the time) said “You can easily get an MA or even a doctorate, but do you want to be stuck like these people?”

His advice was clear; add my Japanese ability to my engineering degree and real-world experience and run with it, as that was much more promising that becoming a Japanese specialist.

Admittedly, this being the 1970s, it was still possible to become a translator of sorts with only foreign language or translation in your skill set, but his advice was spot on for me, and I only became a translator after a suddenly available job elsewhere provided me more than three years’ experience working as the Japan branch manager of a US manufacturer, that offering me a great learning experience that prepared me for the real world of providing language services to direct translation consumers.

Being told not to bother can be the best thing you can hear, if it opens your eyes to other, better opportunities.

I’ll repeat the advice to Japanese learners. Don’t bother learning Japanese if your goal is to be a translator. It’s too late. Your chances of success are tiny, and it would be better to just add Japanese ability to a solid qualification and skills in another area that would provide a career even without Japanese ability.

Landmines in the Evening

It was 1976 when I visited the Japanese trading company handling the electronic measurement products of my US employer. I was soon to fire them, switch to another trading company, and move to Japan to manage the directly run operation, but working with them provided me an inside look into the situation of going through a trading company to sell products of a US company in Japan.

One day, while chatting with my contact at the company—a section head at the time—he happened to mention that people from Korea were visiting them that day. It was about 5:30pm. He said they always visited around that time, and you know exactly what they expected to be treated to. It still being in the 1970s, might guess was that it was not just dinner and drinks.

The trading company evidently got the benefit of a war reparations agreement between Japan and Korea (money from the Japanese government given to a foreign state and boomeranging back to a Japanese trading company, which is not uncommon), and I guess that emboldened the Korea people to ask for something more than products sold by the trading company.

The only other time I had encountered such entertainment was a few years after that, when I was at dinner attended by a company president—now deceased, and the founder of an older, TSE-listed company (before he was essentially ousted by a bank and a major computer manufacturer in a takeover)—and a European dealer of his new company, who was visiting Japan.

At dinner, the CEO leaned over to me and essentially asked me whether he should arrange for a woman for his visitor. Without interpreting, of course, I advised him that it would be a risky move and might even worsen the relationship with his dealer. He (I hope) withdrew the idea of setting his visitor up with some evening diversion.

There are landmines on the road to success in Japan, and sometimes the Japanese themselves risk treading on them.