A little bit off topic. There is undeniably a strong awareness in the press here that "apologizing" the local way doesn't fit the world outside. Let's call the world outside, the World. I was trying and find something clever, sensible to write about this, about wheter Mr. Toyoda will testify in poor English, another dady's rich boy who spent a year in a US university for nothing as far as his competence in English goes. Did he spend the year slurping noodles delivered daily by DHL from Tokyo, sorry, Nagoya. Dried Kishimen. No. I was trying and find something clever and just bumped into this one article. And reading the many comments, I totally forgot about the article itself. The relationship between Japan and the US is sour, sourer maybe than the relationship between France and Germany. References to Pearl Harbor are a standard feature that tells a story. I think Japan's irrelevance is a wonder. It will make for a strong third world economy. Irrelevancy, but not as North Korea. Here is an irrelevancy that doesn't forbid commerce and the dispatch of wonders as interpreted in the West, that cool Japan soft power stuff. A source of wonder but a one sided interpretation of it all. The Nissan's leader hailed and marketized as a celebs here has talked more in public, that is through the media, than a leader of Toyota in a whole life. Industry hermits meet mad countries hermit leaders in their speechlessness.
The World versus Toyoda is a case study of a world apartness of language as a public act. And the rules in the World are still and always dictated by the West. And it is not a matter of lingo but of interaction gap, as huge as a black hole.
If I were a conference interpreter, thanks god I am not, I think I would dread to interpret Mr. Toyoda words when he testifies on Wednesday, granted he does it through a translator as they say. In one way or another, Mr. Toyoda is bound to automatically read aloud patterns of speech some PR specialists' team is now trying and have him swallow as a rehearsal before the grand jury test, somewhere in the top floor suite of a top class Hotel in Washington. The whole will recede in the backstage. It will come back to normal, the flawed cars and all. It will simply reinforce, or reconfirm that something is outwordly here that doesn't fit the World that decides, whether you like it or not, what format of speech must rule, at least the world of commerce. It also claims for deeper pondering about interpersonal skills in Japan, when in Japan, while not being Japanese. It is an essential issue that has been kept at bay under too much commentaries by oldtimers in Japan. Donald Richie is the exception for me. This outworldliness is here to stay. It protects this World here that does not belong. It nurtures its inappropriateness that sounds cool from outside. That why you need interpreters, for better or not worse.
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