I mean, you’re talking about one of the most important figures in video game history, if not the history of electronics in general. He does extensive work in the States. I would imagine he would’ve learned English for business purposes.
Not a big deal at all; if he feels he doesn’t need to, that’s cool. Obviously it hasn’t held him back from being the legend that he is. I just found it interesting.
Er… what prompted this?
Probably the fact that he needs a translator for every interview.
My guess is he does not speak it well, but he never seems to need anyone to translate what others say so he probably understands…I think.
Ultimatly he may just need a translator to make sure what he wants to say is well said.
What he said. I was watching an interview with him about various nintendo stuff from E3, and it just popped into my head.
I imagine that if he did speak English, it’d be like that Iron Chef episode of Futurama.
NOW INTRODUCULU, SUPER MARIO BROTHSULU!!!
God, that’d be awesome.
From what I’ve read about him his mother was actually an English teacher in Japan so he understands it well enough, he just has little aptitude when it comes to speaking it.
I assume he understands English perfectly (you’d think so anyways), but probably speaks broken English (or Engrish). He might just have a hard time expressing himself in English. Translator may just work out better for him.
Given that so many fans hang on his every word…better off they come out right than people misunderstand about a new ‘Insert favorite IP here’ game coming out.
A lot of Japanese people understand English as I think most take it in schools, but not many like to speak it because of their accent, pronunciation, or “Engrish” for a lack of better terms. A Japanese friend from school told me this.
There’s also a significant difference between not speaking English and not speaking it well enough to be comfortable making public/official statements in it. For instance, I speak Russian well enough to get by in most conversations, get the gist of a lot of movies, and that sort of thing that would pass for saying I “speak” it. However, I couldn’t really pull off formalized elegance or writing a college paper, and I’m certainly not confident enough in my abilities to make a press release in it. I’d imagine it’s fairly similar with Miyamoto.