Lost In Translation

For those of you who watched the Matsuzaka press conference yesterday evening, Matsuzaka's "translator" is a Boras employee named Tak Sato. With any luck, he's out of a job this morning.

He was horrible -- guaranteeing the Q&A would be worthless. Daisuke would speak for a minute -- laughing, gesturing -- and Sato would offer one short, inaudible sentence in fractured English. Or, as he said a couple of times, "Engrish".

Theo could have wandered out on Landsdowne Street and dragged in the first Asian-looking guy he saw and things probably would have gone smoother. ... Sato "struggled to communicate Matsuzaka's answers" and "his command of the English language was shaky".

The Herald was blunt:

Matsuzaka's translator was universally panned by the English-speaking media, which discovered afterward that many of the pitcher's responses were shortened, changed or butchered. Members of the Japanese media helped provide the accurate comments.

The Globe has a transcript. It is far from complete -- and some things I remember are missing -- but this exchange gives you a flavour of the proceedings:

Q. Welcome and I wonder if you could tell us at what point in these negotiations that you realized that you would be coming to the Red Sox, and did you have your doubts that this day would come to pass?

Matsuzaka: My nickname is Japan is Monster.

If anyone can find Dice's actual answers to the media's questions, that would be great.

P.S. Both the Herald and Globe have stories about how the deal almost fell through at the last minute. ... Some great quotes about Dice from Craig Shipley, Boston's vice president of professional and international scotuing.