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Managing Editor:

Dayton Hare

Copy Editors:

Elise Laarman

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.

