Her Master's Voice: Carlos Ghosn's Japanese Alter Ego
“I am following him everywhere, except into the rest room.” For nearly twelve years, interpreter Yuki Morimoto has been Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn’s adapter to the Japanese world. The lady is a miracle. She simultaneously translates Ghosn’s high-speed stream of wit and Gallic sarcasm into Japanese, and translates Japanese back into perfect English. Morimoto is so in tune with Ghosn that she sometimes finishes his sentences before him – in Japanese.
Morimoto-san is proud of conveying precisely how her boss feels. She does not pretty up what people say, she translates it as it comes.
In a land where the waving of arms makes you suspect of suffering from epilepsy, Morimoto has adopted Ghosn’s trademark body language that underscores words with gesticulations. She transposes Ghosn’s undulating emotions into wave after wave of likewise emotional Japanese, and when the boss gets loud, Morimoto is known to crank up her voice.
If Ghosn is displeased with you in Yokohama, you will hear it. If you don’t speak English, you will hear it again from Morimoto. Amongst the executive crew at Nissan’s headquarter in Yokohama, the saying goes that “when the CEO yells at you, you get yelled at twice.”
For more than a year, I had been bugging the troops and generals in Yokohama to let me do a story about Morimoto, who I had been surreptitiously recording anyway. When I suggested it, a lot of sucking air through the teeth ensued, I was told that it would be, you know, muzukashii, or difficult, because she’s shy in real life, and, sumimasen, the CEO’s personal translator, wakarimasu ka? I kept suggesting it, they kept sucking air.
Today, to my thorough dismay, I find this seven minute feature-length movie about the (shy my eye) translator on YouTube. Produced by Nissan’s global newsroom, it confirmed my worst fears: Those guys are here to put us all out of business. After more than a year of tut-tutting and sucking air, they wait until I’m out of the country, and steal my idea. Wait until I’m back in Tokyo, Dan Sloan.
Dan hasn’t put us out of business just yet.
In the week since the Morimoto video was up on YouTube, it attracted a shocking 419 views. If you see more than 419, then these are all ours, adding clicks to injury.
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When I was in Japan I worked with translators for many meetings and presentations. Although I speak Japanese pretty well, just to be on the safe side, I always used translators for especially important meetings and public presentations. When someone is with you in a professional setting, translating your thoughts and words into another language, you develop a special bond. There is a special level of respect between you and your translator - their skill is as important as yours because how you communicate, at least in my line of work, is as important as what you communicate. If that bond, which is so well described above, fails to develop, then you probably need to find another translator. I'll never forget the meeting in which someone on the other side, noting the rapport I had with my translator, asked how long we had been married. We all had a good laugh, especially since the woman was almost 30 years my senior. When you get that kind of response, you know you have "the connection" and you go from performing without a safety net to a situation where you can take real risks with how you communicate because you know this other person will not let you fall. A professional relationship like this is amazing to see, but even more amazing to be a part of. It's a melding of the minds, like having a second brain inside your head that speaks another language and knows another culture. And to those of you who are wondering about romantic entanglements it can be tempting, but that special relationship is like catching lightning in a bottle, you never want to mess that up. It's too important.
Articles like these are why I stopped reading other car sites and let my Automobile subscription lapse. well done.