Delay judgment of apparent insults that were filtered by multilingual journalism

In early 2011, when investment analysts asked Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata for his first impression of competitor Sony’s next generation portable (the PlayStation Vita due to debut December 17 in Japan), he initially declined to comment. Apparently, he had a bad experience just one year prior when asked for his first impression of Apple’s iPad and the media allegedly misrepresented a comment he made saying the iPad was basically a bigger iPod Touch.

“I didn’t say (the iPad comment) with any positive and negative connotation,” said Iwata, according to The Wall Street Journal. “The nuance had gotten distorted” after the comments had been translated from Japanese to English and back again

“So then it became a story about how I trashed the iPad as just a bigger iPod Touch,” explained Iwata. “I read these remarks online and the situation had become almost surreal.”

Although Iwata claimed to have made a very neutral comment, worldwide headlines indeed said Iwata “scoffs at,” “dismisses” and was “unimpressed with” Apple’s iPad. Knowing journalists might mistranslate his intentions again, Iwata delayed sharing his first impression of PlayStation’s new portable system.

It's a sad reality in journalism that wars, disasters, controversies and blunders sell the news. Worse yet, intentionally or unintentionally at times, journalists artificially create some of these controversies. As in the situation with Iwata, poor translation can play a role in creating these problems, thus adding unnecessary tension and stress for anyone on the international stage, particularly as misrepresented comments can spread like wildfire before the mistake is caught.

International businesses and businesspeople are not the only victims of these falsely polemic misquotes. Any competitive situation, such as sports or politics, can create a tendency to expect such synthetic hullabaloo. Similar incidents in international sports give examples of what to do — or not to do — in such situations. The 2010 World Cup offers some excellent examples.