Tag: business

Denial, Delusion, Diversion, and Desperation

From everything I can see of posts and comments from translators on LinkedIn and elsewhere, I fully expect that great numbers freelance translators and their organizations will continue to deny, delude, and divert attention away from the impending demise of freelance translating as a realistic career.

I fully understand the pain involved in contemplating the end, but the end is here already. To deny it is simply delusional.

Almost all freelance translators are stuck in this position because they are unable to acquire translation-consuming clients. Most are stuck working for agencies that simply act as brokers for their services.

Translators who think they will attract or somehow acquire direct clients to replace agencies should go out and try it. It will become apparent to almost all translators that direct clients are out of their reach.

And the agencies freelancers have relied on are not going to come back. The belief that they’ll come back is a delusion. The agency translation work model has all but ended.

Only a very small number of freelancers will survive, because very few freelancers are capable of acquiring direct clients (later adopters of AI), which at this point, other than getting in-house work at a non-translation entity, is one of the few paths for survival, at least for a while, doing language-related work.

And translators need to stop telling themselves and others that post-editing AI output is the new task for translators and that it is translation. Post-editing is not translation, and it does not offer earning potential at anywhere near a level that would make it a realistic career, the mind-numbing work of that deadend activity aside.

People need to get real, set the pain aside, and think about what to do next.

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.

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 characteristically 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.