During An Internship In A Foreign Country, Another Intern Tried To Sabotage Them Using Google Translate, But It Backfired Big Time

Google translate is great in theory, but it isn’t always 100% accurate.

One intern finds that out the hard way in today’s story when he tries to prove that learning Persian is unimportant because of Google translate.

Let’s see how the story unfolds…

Ruining Skylar

After college, I was recruited by a company to take part in a paid internship in a foreign country.

The company was American, and so were most of my coworkers, but there were several international offices, and I had landed a spot in a pretty popular one.

Now, I hadn’t gotten this job based on my looks. In fact, if I hadn’t been studying a foreign language (Persian) I absolutely wouldn’t have gotten the gig, and that was made clear to me from the start of it.

While the everyday work had literally nothing to do with Persian or any countries that speak the language, there was occasionally the need for a translator specifically in that language, and the company had no one else who fit that role.

My Persian wasn’t perfect by any means, but I promised them it was a work in progress and that it would suffice.

OP introduces us to Skylar.

I was hired with three other paid interns, one of them a tall, socially awkward man named Skylar.

Now, simply put, Skylar had no idea when to shut up. His routine – and I was convinced that he practiced this – was to rudely start conversations with people by asking uncomfortable, personal, or out of place questions, and then follow up on these questions with a Devil’s Advocate kind of conversation.

Nobody enjoyed being around Skylar, and he wasn’t emphatically good at the job, but I paid it little mind.

Skylar made a point of proving he could translate Persian as well as OP.

Skylar had been studying the language native to the country we were living in.

He frequently and loudly criticized me for not learning or being interested in this language, but I maintained that it was in my very best interests to study and perfect my Persian, and noted that I had a pretty good set of relationships with the Persian-speaking immigrant community. No harm done, right?

Not right.

One day at work, as I’m coming back from lunch, Skylar, sneering, informs me (in front of the other 2 interns) that he convinced my supervisor that he could translate a Persian-language document with Google Translate alone, and that I wasn’t needed for that role.

My supervisor let him have a stab at it, and he gave it back a fully translated a little bit later. He then said to me that it seems my language abilities were “not necessary” in the first place.

According to the supervisor, Skylar had translated Persian.

To this day, I don’t know why I didn’t just push him out the 7th story of that building (which we were on).

I went back to the office after lunch and, sure enough, my supervisor confirmed that Skylar was able to translate the document.

Look, some people have different interests.

You like football, I like basketball.

You study this foreign language? I study Persian.

There’s no need to degrade my interests, and certainly no reason to professionally threaten me over different interests.

Turns out Skylar’s translation wasn’t perfect.

I politely asked my supervisor if he’d like me to double check the document.

He thought that would be a good idea.

Great. Lets take a look at this translation.

First sentence: Wrong. Really wrong.

Second sentence: Wrong.

Third sentence: Wow. Impressively wrong.

OP explained to the supervisor why Skylar’s translation was wrong.

Remember when your Spanish teacher told you that you couldn’t use Google Translate, and that you might confuse simple words, like “bee” and “be”? Skylar had done that for something like 6 pages straight.

The translated document didn’t actually translate to the correct verbiage. By the end of it, it became clear to me that Skylar had made up a lot of what Google Translate couldn’t clarify.

I took my supervisor aside and started nerding out on Persian language facts, showing him simple grammatical inconsistencies in the translation, and eventually pointing out how the overall message of the text is changed entirely from start to finish. I underscore that Skylar didn’t just get this wrong, he pretended to have it right when he didn’t get anywhere close.

The supervisor gave OP more projects.

To his credit, my supervisor rolled with this, gave me a smile, and closed the issue. Skylar wouldn’t be doing any more language translations.

Except over the next few weeks, all the more important projects came my way. Things that Skylar and I would normally divvy up became my responsibilities.

Months passed and I would go so far as to offer – through my supervisor – to take on a few additional reports or projects from Skylar’s workload, to ensure they got done quickly. And I’d get them. Nothing that was too difficult, but always the exact projects that I knew Skylar was looking forward to.

OP got hired by the company.

As the internship came to a close, word spread that one of us would be offered a permanent job. Skylar had been talking about this since the internship started – almost a year ago – but we all knew what was going to happen.

The boss gave him a handshake and thanked him for working with us, and let him know that he’d be considered for anything that came up in the future.

I was asked to step into another room to negotiate salary.

I later got confirmation that Skylar’s stunt with the Persian translation was a big red flag to the supervisors there about what kind of work he was capable of doing, and led to him becoming a low-quality intern pretty quickly.

Oh, and my Persian got much, much better. So f*** you, Skylar, for ever telling me what language I was obligated to study, or how my hard work was all for nothing.

That’s a great ending to the story. Skylar was trying to show off and act like OP wasn’t important, but OP pointed out that Skylar was wrong. It’s great that OP’s hard work paid off.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted…

This reader might know Skylar.

Another reader is sure Skylar’s expression when he didn’t get the job was rewarding.

Another person bashes the name Skylar.

This reader has a question about Persian vs Farsi.

One lesson here is not to get too confident with Google translate!

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.