I’m an early career software developer. I have it on my profile that I speak Japanese, Chinese, etc. My Japanese is quite rusty for now. (something I plan to rectify soon)
Anyways, this guy sends me a connect invite with the following note while using a first and last name that are not Japanese (English from England is how I would describe them actually):
HIM:
Hi I run \[LINK TO WEBSITE\] with George, but he is so busy and I am Japanese I am looking for someone who can do interview with our clients instead of me for a discussion about development job with just English If you accept my suggestion, you will be member of our company I will pay you $50/hr
ME:
日本語が話せますか。
HIM:
日本人です。
ME:
すみません、 何を提案していますか？
HIM:
私はジョージと\[COMPANY NAME\]の会社とサイトを運営しています。 ジョージは仕事が忙しくて私が顧客を集める仕事をしています 顧客は私たちに仕様を知らせるためにミーティングを要求しています. しかし私は日本人なのでネイティブのように英語が下手です。 それで私の代わりにミーティングに参加してお客様から仕様を受けていただけるとありがたいです。
一般的に顧客はアメリカ人で,ネイティブアメリカ人の方が好きで,アメリカ人とだけ仕事をしたいと思っています
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And that is how the convo has gone thus far as I’m like…..this is kinda odd? George is someone whose picture is on the website and evidently is another founder. It seems like he lives on Long Island. The company address is a house address on Long Island. This Japanese guy’s picture on the website is the same person as from LinkedIn, but a different photo.
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Any thoughts? Like on his Japanese even?
4 comments
did he make the punctuation mistakes or was that you in your transcription? If it was him, that’s quite a big red flag. Also that reads like Google translate but idk if Google translate would make those punctuation mistakes. Anyways it’s most likely a scam.
There’s no way in hell he’s Japanese. Or he could be by blood and was not raised to think and speak the way a native does, but that’s even more unlikely since he’s trying to play into the stereotype that Japanese people’s English skills are notoriously bad. Aside from his weird (machine translation-like) phrasing, he also relies very VERY heavily on 私 and 私たち, which if you’ve ever interacted with the Japanese language, you’ll know is quite rare compared to the English “I”.
His Japanese is not natural, it looks machine translated. Like weewee said, it’s probably a scam
Machine translated for sure. Get these on Line all the time.