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Managing Editor:
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Finntan Storer
Wednesday, September 12, 2018 // The Statement
Translating the Donald to Japanese
P
eople always complain about
Donald Trump.
I say, try to explain him to a
foreign audience.
This summer I had the privilege
of working at the New York bureau
of TV Tokyo, one of Japan’s major
television stations. I was put on a
morning news program that focuses
on business and finance, so of course,
there was a lot of reading the Wall
Street Journal as well as dusty econ
textbooks in the back of the office.
But the most memorable part of the
whole experience was the arduous
task of reporting on none other than
the president himself.
The words of the president of the
United States has a massive impact
both at home and abroad. Love him
or hate him, everyone is compelled
to hear what Trump is saying on
Twitter, and the people of Japan are
no different.
But here’s where it gets complicated:
Sometimes, nobody — not even his
own staff — can comprehend what
he’s saying. If native English speakers
can’t understand him, that means
it’s a massive headache for foreign
broadcasters.
The difficulty translators have
when putting Trump’s speeches and
tweets in their own language has
been well documented. Trump is a
free-wheeling speaker on stage and
a “covfefe” online, which confuses
people used to presidents sticking
to a script. Media outlets across the
globe have also been known to go to
great lengths to offer roundabout
expressions
of
Trump’s
most
offending statements.
I’ve
always
heard
about
the
difficulty of translating the Donald,
but never did I anticipate how much
of a pain in the butt it would be until
I actually had to do it.
Take this news from July 31.
A radical gun rights activist was
preparing to release files online
with instructions on how to build
3D model guns while the attorneys
general of eight states were suing to
block him. It sounded complicated
enough, especially when we had to
condense it to a 30-second segment,
but then Trump decided to wade into
the debate.
“I am looking into 3-D Plastic Guns
being sold to the public,” Trump
tweeted. “Already spoke to NRA,
doesn’t seem to make much sense!”
The main obstacle to translating
this tweet is glaringly
obvious. We are unsure
whether “doesn’t seem to
make much sense!” refers
to 3D guns in general
(the first sentence) or
his
conversation
with
the
National
Rifle
Association (the second
sentence).
In America, we would
have
the
luxury
of
watching commentators
on CNN battle out what
exactly
Trump
means
by this tweet. But the
Japanese have their own
problems to worry about
— a tweet about 3D guns
would most likely not
make it onto the evening
political
roundtable
program.
Thus, the burden falls on
Japan’s newspapers and TV stations
(that’s me!) to accurately convey what
the president of the United States is
thinking.
What’s important here is context.
Unfortunately,
the
White
House
never commented on this tweet to
clarify what Trump was thinking,
so I had to think back to the past
few news cycles to determine where
Trump would stand on 3D-printed
guns.
I knew right after the shooting at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School, Trump said “we have to fight
(the NRA) every once in a while” in
enacting sensible gun control laws.
However, he backtracked in May
and vowed not to support any more
firearm regulations.
Trump supporting liberal causes
and then flipping to the conservative
position to please his supporters
has been a common occurrence, but
sometimes he genuinely seems to
change his mind — which leaves us at
a loss as to what his true feelings are.
In the end, my editor and I
determined
that
Trump
would
probably not attack the NRA at
that moment, and the flow of the
sentence seemed to indicate Trump
was befuddled by 3D guns generally.
Thus, we decided the expression “he
expressed skepticism of 3D guns”
while not expressing approval or
lack thereof best represented the
situation.
Another
difficulty
translators
face in interpreting Trump is his
vocabulary
and
language
skills.
Trump’s grammar and diction in
speeches is known to be just below a
sixth-grade level, and we Americans
treat them as such.
However, in Japan — perhaps out of
respect for decorum — the media does
not directly translate Trump’s words
into the vocabulary-level of a sixth
grader and instead elevates it to that
appropriate of an elder statesman.
Spoken
Japanese,
especially
in
fiction, has a variety of cues that
reveal the gender, age, social class
and regional origin. So as a 72-year
old head of state, Trump has to be
accorded proper language to not
shock viewers with the speech of a
12-year old boy.
Take this July 19 interview when,
in an unusual move for presidents,
Trump said he was “not thrilled”
about the Federal Reserve Board
raising interest rates.
“I’m not thrilled because we go up,”
Trump said. “And every time you go
up, they want to raise rates again. I
don’t really — I am not happy about
it.”
This one was tricky for two reasons.
The first was “every time you go
up.” In his usual fashion, Trump left
what was going up ambiguous. Based
on context clues, my editor and I
determined the what was the state
of the economy, so we translated the
statement as “every time the economy
recovers .”
The second was “I’m not thrilled.”
That
is
a
colloquial
expression
in English with no equivalent in
Japanese. And since Trump’s words
were likely going to move the market
(which it actually did), we had to
be
meticulous
in
conveying
the
right mood so audiences (especially
investors) won’t get too alarmed.
In the end, we settled on “I’m not
impressed,” which admittedly felt
a little mature and well thought out
than the original English. But since
the other options, including the
onomatopoeia “waku waku,” which
indicates
excitement,
made
him
sound immature or did not accurately
convey his mood, we had to settle on
a substitute.
Other similar Trumpisms roiled
my corner of the newsroom once in a
while, but with tenacity and grit, we
managed to get it right every time.
It is ironic that I started to keenly
realize the importance of words in
politics only after encountering them
in a foreign language. Back in 1946,
George Orwell wrote in “Politics and
the English Language” that political
speech “is designed to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable, and
to give an appearance of solidity to
pure wind.”
The same could be said of today’s
political
language.
In
today’s
globalized economy, the words of one
politician can reverberate around the
world in a matter of seconds. This is
why we should always demand those
in higher positions to clarify their
words, lest we get mired in untruths
and convenient euphemisms.
Oh, and to alleviate the workload of
translators too!
BY ISHI MORI, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
File Photo/Daily
A Japanese newscaster records in front of the New York City skyline.