Charlie StrossWhy LLMs can't handle everyday social etiquette in Persian:
Reading between the lines, this is a really good caution for any diplomats who are thinking of firing their interpreters and replacing them with "AI".
redsakana@cstross To be fair I think "AI translation is fine" is largely an extension of the "English gets you by everywhere because globalization" pathology pushed by European governments and businesses for cost-saving and/or neoliberal-ideology reasons for several decades.
A friend works for an export-promotion agency that helps European companies establish a presence in East Asian countries, and has had quite a few stories to tell about SMEs losing their shirts going in on their own with that attitude, even in the supposedly-highly-law-abiding democracies.
There's a cottage industry of dudes whose only skill is to speak fluent English with American sports idioms that the CEO class loves. They wine and dine idiot managers coming over who have no idea about local language/markets/customs, throw in sports talk to convince them that they are huge players in local business networks and getting the furriner's products to market is going to be a slam dunk, feed glowing fake reports to string along the current victim, and then use the consulting fees to acquire new marks.
Kibrika@redsakana @cstross How would knowing the local culture help them not get swindled? Are the people around them giving the SEOs or whoever hints that the person they are trusting is not, in fact, trustworthy, but the hints are culturally local / in native language?
@kibrika I'm not familiar with the details of these operations besides the anecdotes I have heard.
But you have probably seen pictures of Tokyo or Seoul with high buildings plastered full of signs and advertisements, and streets filled with stores big and small.
Many people will naturally think "there's a lot of business going on here." But what doesn't occur to quite as many is "competition here is absolutely fierce."
So you have a dude who is promising that he can easily make your small/mid-size brand, somewhat-well-known in your home country/region, a hit here, where there is not only a massive established local industry with their national brands, but also a huge sales push from the likes of LVMH, Nike, Apple, and so on.
If you have zero knowledge of how distribution deals or advertising or cross-promotions or corporate culture in general work here, or perhaps even have no idea of the extent of local competition, how are you going to evaluate that claim? How would you even find out when, it turns out, almost no one except your new "friend" speaks English at all?
This is the false promise of world-is-flat globalization narratives from the 00s of which "English gets you by everywhere" is a corollary: that being familiar with how all this works at home (for Europeans: usually in a much smaller market) will provide accurate guidance in a quite different market, or that a "rules-based global order" will somehow remove the need to do due diligence on your consultants and local conditions.
Being awed of the bright lights and trusting the invisible hand of globalization seems pretty likely to make you an easy target for con men who are happy to validate your beliefs.
@redsakana Thank you! That makes sense, sort of XD
As a relatively introverted person, how trade routes (or foreign branches of companies, etc) get established seems like magic - something a little bit impossible anyway.
On the other hand, trusting one stranger seems pretty irresponsible if you're representing more than just yourself. But you have to trust someone, I think.
@kibrika Yes, that's why you'd usually want to either find out stuff yourself first, or have someone who understands both your local market and the target market help you (such as a national export promotion agency). Then you'd have some ideas about strategies to pursue and knowledge to evaluate consultants who might be able to implement those strategies in your new target market.
There's always weird lucky strikes of course, such as the huge sauna boom in Japan, which has probably created unexpected opportunities for some Finnish/Swedish/Baltic companies. But if your company is not buoyed by some surprising phenomenon, exporting tends to be pretty hard.