Google AdNonsense

People say the internet has revolutionized translation. Bullshit. Google has revolutionized translation. Now, if you can’t find a word on Google, it doesn’t exist.

So many of us have become Google drones that we advertise in droves with Google’s AdSense program. Enter “translation agency” in Google and you’ll pull up a bewildering array of AdSense ads and hits, all basically the same.

I, too, rode the AdSense bandwagon. At first, I hovered near the phone with sweaty palms and a dry throat, expecting a deluge of clients. In a four-month period, I had two destitute Ph.D. students ask me to translate their 600-page dissertations. (One of them even requested a per-word rate “because I’ll be revising it later.”) There was one inquiry from an electronics firm who answered neither my calls nor my e-mails. And, mysteriously, six inquiries for English into Dutch.

The vast majority of inquiries, however, went something like this:

From: PrettyGirl16
To: Trench Warrior
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2002 3:35 PM
Subject: PLS PLS PLS HELP!!!!

Cn u translaet this!!! I need it real bd!!! THX SO MUCH!!!!!!! ;-) ;-)

Ill chx 4 it 2morrow!!! THX THX!!!!!!

Attached was a ten-page term paper downloaded from a cheat site.

Suffice to say, I cancelled the service pretty quickly.