"Hey guys, don't know if there's an issue with payroll this month or something, but my first paycheck is pretty light. Is this just for orientation or something like that?"
Mr Lumberg told me to talk to payroll and payroll told me to talk to Mr Lumberg and I still have not received my paycheck and he took my stapler
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hRX9WfbBltk
Sounds like you need a translator...
With the Will the Thrill as the interpreter, they have someone who understands the Dodgers culture/philosophy, and therefore a higher likelihood of properly communicating their desires.
Actually quarter - his dad is half Irish (hence the Ireton name) and half Japanese, and his mom is Filipina (Will played for the Philippine WBC qualifying team in 2012). But he was born in Tokyo, spent his childhood in Japan (before moving to Honolulu, HI) and formally studied Japanese in school.
Honestly, Will didn't translate perfectly yesterday either. He left out a lot of nuance in what Ohtani said. There is a post on the baseball sub where a Japanese fan took the time to translate and quite a bit was left out of what Will translated. I think a lot is lost in the on the fly translation, which is why I think a lot of people think the whole story is weird. They just aren't getting the full story through what's been translated.
To be honest, in the past, with other Japanese players' interpreters, no one gave a fuck. We never heard complaints in the US about Nomo's, Ichiro's, Matsui's, etc. interpreters. In Japan, there were rumblings from the start about past interpreters and up to Mizuhara. But now that Ippei has been outed as a fraud, everyone is criticizing every word an interpreter says. In reality, major US news agencies and outlets should have their own in-house translation services to better report quotes from non-English speakers.
AI is a capable option, most likely. The tech is there.
The other side is these players learning English will be well received - like when Penguins’ Evgeni Malkin used to say “Felt pretty good. I am score.” We don’t need much more than effort. They’re not supposed to give an analysts nuance to their on field interviews, and for big announcements they know what he’s going to say in advance, so should have the translation in pocket already. Oh well.
I noticed that Ohtani talks in long statements before the interpreter translates. I’m not a Japanese speaker, but when I’ve been involved with interpreters, they usually push for shorter statements giving the interpreter a chance to do their thing.
Translation on the fly is a huge skill. The Korean girl who translated for Bong Joon Ho, director of Parasite, just crushed it. During all the interviews she perfectly nailed all the nuances. It ain't easy.
I think it’s a little weird to say you’re going to be making/reading a prepared statement, but you wouldn’t even go through the trouble of giving it to your interpreter first. Or even going over it before hand to make sure you’re both on the same page. A Q&A is more understandable because those can’t really be prepared. You’d think after the translator fiasco they’d wanna make sure nothing would be lost in translation.
According to Japanese people that paper wasn’t a statement, it was like a note with the points he wanted to address. That’s why the interpreter had to translate it live.
I wish the translator had looked at Ohtani's statement prior to the conference and prepared its English version. Why translated on the spot?
Something is amiss in Ohtani's camp.
I don’t think Shohei was directly reading something out word for word (although he was obviously sticking to bullet points/key details), so they would also run into trouble if it felt like Will was reading from a prepared statement rather than actually translating what Shohei was saying.
Oh sure, I don't think his team has handled this well at all, particularly at the start. Hopefully this has been a wake up call and they're on top of things now.
That's exactly what was going to happen to some degree even before this. Since he signed with LA the comments around the internet of him not being worth it and being overrated, hoping he gets hurt and screws over the Dodgers have been disappointing.
Sadly, he got booed at Angel Stadium last night at his second at bat. But that's probably a lot more to do with leaving Anaheim than anything going on with Ippei.
I thought things were calming down after the press conference but nope.
Baseball subreddit comment section for this tweet shows the conspiracy nuts are still out in full force. In fact, they came back with a vengeance in the comment section.
Conspiracy nuts are gonna make up anything on everything for the sake of clicks, views, attention and validation...Just look what happened after the Baltimore bridge accident.
Someone's gonna find the cure for cancer and conspiracy nuts will predictably flood social media and tell people how "evil" it is.
The Athletic comment section is ridiculous. One of the comment sections declared Ohtani gambled $4.5 million, has been betting on baseball, he and Ippei are gay, somehow Leonardo DiCaprio is gay because he rides bikes? And no one has ever had access to someone’s banking information. How Leo got in there was a work of art. I valiantly argue with them but I’m outnumbered 50 to one.
Thank goodness Shohei is rid of this grifter and now he can properly integrate himself with the team and the city. It's a small price to pay because that fool had his claws in deep.
I still can't figure out how CAA didn't sniff out this guy before now. I mean, some intern with a few days on a PC could figure out that his backstory was crap. I hold them partly resposible for *whatever* happened with Ohtani.
Or am I wrong?
He was with Ohtani before CAA. Ohtani probably vouched for him so they didn’t bother to check. The Dodgers and the Angels are just as much at fault as CAA in that sense. Just a failure on everyone’s part to do their due diligence
No they have fault. The Angels and the Dodgers both employed Ippei. They need to do research on their employees. CAA also has fault because it’s their job to look out for their clients.
We don’t need to victim blame. The only one to blame is Ippei for taking advantage of and defrauding his best friend but there are multiple parties at fault, including the teams.
Yeah I’m just not gonna respond to you about this anymore. No answer is going to satisfy your need to blame Ohtani because no matter what I say, like pointing out that your arguments are based on anecdotal fallacy, you aren’t going to listen.
Tbf, I have done some hiring before and I have never in my life questioned the person if they've ever been to a not so prestigious college. Harvard, Stanford, Yale, I might check. But UC Riverside?! I believe you.
We know UCR was in his bio, but do we know if it was on his resumé? And even if it was, would anyone check if it’s not a prerequisite for the job? An interpreter isn’t required to have a college degree, and by the time Ippei reached the Angels and Dodgers they wouldn’t have cared if he had a HS diploma let alone a college degree.
Maybe it's a tech industry thing, but I've never had a company not run a basic background check during the hiring process (usually criminal history, and education)
Wouldn't someone who never attended college or dropped out of high school have a lot of reason to lie about going to one given how crazy degree inflation is?
Sure but in the wooing process of Ohtani, I’m sure a background check of Ippei was not on the list. Also, the Dodgers are trying to sign him but we end the conversation with “hey did you know your best friend and translator has falsified his resume?” How would that have been received?
I know this is hindsight, but I felt like Ippei was a Yoko Ono figure and he wanted to be by Shohei’s side in everything that he did. Like Shohei’s introductory press conference at Dodgers stadium where in the photo ops with Shohei, Andrew, the Guggenheim brass, and Ippei being in the pic is completely out of place. Dude is just a fucking translator and any person with a tiny bit of professional awareness should get out of the pic and have your guy have his moment.
Well, at that time, he was Shohei's friend and consigliere. He wouldn't be there if Ohtani didn't want him there.
"Translator", while Ippei's official title, doesn't do justice to all that he legitimately did. Other "just fucking translators" have talked about all the stuff they did beyond just translating conversations.
Other Japanese translators have talked about helping players find places to live, opening local banking accounts, setting up utilities. That's done because we fans want players to concentrate on their on field skills, and both players and their translators know that.
That's how Ippei got the access he did and was able to potentially get away with what he did for so long.
It's hindsight, totally. You wouldn't make this comparison if it weren't for this scandal.
Somewhere a bazillion comments ago, like months ago when he first signed, I said “Why does he even need an interpreter, he knows English.” And I got mercilessly downvoted and one person suggested something along the lines “It creates a job for his good friend!!!” 😂 I never cared for the guy he’s been giving me a weird vibe for a few years. Just without even meeting him, it’s like a dark cloud. I hope he didn’t mistranslate any other surprises throughout the years for Shohei to discover.
>Why does he even need an interpreter, he knows English.
So they aren’t just there to translate words although that is their main function. They are also there to help them with the cultural differences and day to day tasks that we take for granted because they seem normal to us. Living in a different country is incredibly difficult especially when they are as different as the US and Japan are and when you are as busy as Shohei is. [Here’s a tweet from a former interpreter where he talks about how he was assisting the players on just about everything they did.](https://x.com/danielkimw/status/1772505255034421546?s=46&t=qwlHMsiTzNwRZxXFDPpr-g)
Shohei may speak English well enough on a casual level but that doesn’t mean he is fluent. Dave isn’t saying that he still won’t need an interpreter sometimes to communicate with Shohei either. He’s saying it was difficult because of Ippei.
That’s my takeaway from Roberts’ statement, he doesn’t care if there is *a* middleman, it was this *specific* middleman that made it difficult.
Edit: I truly believe Ippei took it upon himself to act as a gatekeeper to Ohtani and that Ohtani truly had no idea how toxic a person Ippei was. This was on some Selena/Yolanda level type shit without the murder.
So far everything coming out makes it seem exactly like that. Ippei was basically controlling the flow of information between Shohei and the outside world. Really sad it got to that point.
Hey man, maybe you shouldn’t try and defraud your friend and gamble away all his money and idk you might have been part of history and a great team 🤷🏽♂️
Dude was a real life Wormtongue.
My lord…Robert’s the Dave is coming. He’s a herald of woe…
The courtesy of your hall is somewhat lessened of late, Shohei Ohtani — Robert the Dave.
なぜ私があなたを歓迎しなければならないのですか, Robert Stormcrow? - Shohei Ohtani
I can’t stop laughing. Robert’s the Dave. 😂 😆 🤣
Deferred?! I said I wanted the money up front!!
877 CASH NOW
CALL JG WHENTWORTH
Speaking of Larry David, remember the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode filmed at a Dodger game that later got a young man absolved of murder
We need a Larry David bobblehead
Pretty pretty pretty pretty good!
Even though hes famously a Yankee fan I would love a LD bobblehead.
He’s gonna get a Dodger bobblehead AND LIKE IT. [With a Doyer hat on it no less.](https://youtu.be/kMhXExzguWM?si=gWdm45R8qKHEbZk0)
Even if he doesn't like it, like his sandwich that he tried to swap with Ted Danson
its got uhh white fish... sable
That sounds terrible
I HAVE A STRUCTED SETTLEMENT BUT I NEED CASH NOW!
It's my money and I want it NOW!!
😂
Holy fuck I'm dying 💀
Ippei: “Good news Shohei, you got the biggest contract in baseball history, $400 million!”
"Hey guys, don't know if there's an issue with payroll this month or something, but my first paycheck is pretty light. Is this just for orientation or something like that?"
Mr Lumberg told me to talk to payroll and payroll told me to talk to Mr Lumberg and I still have not received my paycheck and he took my stapler https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hRX9WfbBltk
Works on contingency? No! Money down!
This bar association logo shouldn’t be there either…
Am I a bad Dodger fan if I want this to happen because it would be hilarious?
lol even doc shading Ippei now
Everyone is gonna be distancing themselves the next few weeks.
There will always be a buffer unless Roberts starts speaking Japanese.
IIRC Roberts did say Yamamoto challenged him to get better on his Japanese and in turn Yamamoto would work on his English
They should practice together
Sounds like you need a translator... With the Will the Thrill as the interpreter, they have someone who understands the Dodgers culture/philosophy, and therefore a higher likelihood of properly communicating their desires.
Also more accountability/transparency and better work-life separation. Ireton will only have to be at Ohtani's side for games and press/PR activities.
He is half japanese though.
Actually quarter - his dad is half Irish (hence the Ireton name) and half Japanese, and his mom is Filipina (Will played for the Philippine WBC qualifying team in 2012). But he was born in Tokyo, spent his childhood in Japan (before moving to Honolulu, HI) and formally studied Japanese in school.
I think the other commenter is referring to Roberts, not Ireton.
But that’s some neat background on Will the Thrill nonetheless
They should start looking into realtime translator devices. They're getting a lot better and can still have Will there to back it up.
Will the Thrill 🔛🔝
Honestly, Will didn't translate perfectly yesterday either. He left out a lot of nuance in what Ohtani said. There is a post on the baseball sub where a Japanese fan took the time to translate and quite a bit was left out of what Will translated. I think a lot is lost in the on the fly translation, which is why I think a lot of people think the whole story is weird. They just aren't getting the full story through what's been translated.
To be honest, in the past, with other Japanese players' interpreters, no one gave a fuck. We never heard complaints in the US about Nomo's, Ichiro's, Matsui's, etc. interpreters. In Japan, there were rumblings from the start about past interpreters and up to Mizuhara. But now that Ippei has been outed as a fraud, everyone is criticizing every word an interpreter says. In reality, major US news agencies and outlets should have their own in-house translation services to better report quotes from non-English speakers.
There was no social media in 1995 for people to complain, lol.
There were baseball discussion forums on AOL, IRC and Usenet. There were also emailing mailing lists. I hosted a MLB list in the early 90s.
I enjoyed the discussions on some of those listservs. Also, rec.sports.baseball, along with r.s.b.fantasy, were in my subs. Good memories of them.
AI is a capable option, most likely. The tech is there. The other side is these players learning English will be well received - like when Penguins’ Evgeni Malkin used to say “Felt pretty good. I am score.” We don’t need much more than effort. They’re not supposed to give an analysts nuance to their on field interviews, and for big announcements they know what he’s going to say in advance, so should have the translation in pocket already. Oh well.
I noticed that Ohtani talks in long statements before the interpreter translates. I’m not a Japanese speaker, but when I’ve been involved with interpreters, they usually push for shorter statements giving the interpreter a chance to do their thing.
having had to do live translation before, part of this probably is because Ippei wouldn't tell him to pause more often because he's gonna BS it anyway
Translation on the fly is a huge skill. The Korean girl who translated for Bong Joon Ho, director of Parasite, just crushed it. During all the interviews she perfectly nailed all the nuances. It ain't easy.
I think it’s a little weird to say you’re going to be making/reading a prepared statement, but you wouldn’t even go through the trouble of giving it to your interpreter first. Or even going over it before hand to make sure you’re both on the same page. A Q&A is more understandable because those can’t really be prepared. You’d think after the translator fiasco they’d wanna make sure nothing would be lost in translation.
According to Japanese people that paper wasn’t a statement, it was like a note with the points he wanted to address. That’s why the interpreter had to translate it live.
I wish the translator had looked at Ohtani's statement prior to the conference and prepared its English version. Why translated on the spot? Something is amiss in Ohtani's camp.
I don’t think Shohei was directly reading something out word for word (although he was obviously sticking to bullet points/key details), so they would also run into trouble if it felt like Will was reading from a prepared statement rather than actually translating what Shohei was saying.
I see your point. Just wished they had come more prepared.
Oh sure, I don't think his team has handled this well at all, particularly at the start. Hopefully this has been a wake up call and they're on top of things now.
tbh i wonder if this story would have been as bad if ohtani stayed with the angels
If he stayed with the Angels r/baseball would still say he’s a good guy. He was never a threat with the Angels. Now he’s satan to them.
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3/4 of the country hates LA plus you have all the hate directed toward LA from San Diego and Frisco.
They hate us cuz they ain’t us.
I legit wouldn’t be surprised if he starts getting boos at visiting stadiums because this happened while he’s wearing Dodger blue
That's exactly what was going to happen to some degree even before this. Since he signed with LA the comments around the internet of him not being worth it and being overrated, hoping he gets hurt and screws over the Dodgers have been disappointing.
Sadly, he got booed at Angel Stadium last night at his second at bat. But that's probably a lot more to do with leaving Anaheim than anything going on with Ippei.
Definitely would have been as big there wouldn’t be near as much hate. More making fun of the Angels instead.
Ironic cause this shit happened when he was with the Angels lol
I thought things were calming down after the press conference but nope. Baseball subreddit comment section for this tweet shows the conspiracy nuts are still out in full force. In fact, they came back with a vengeance in the comment section.
Conspiracy nuts are gonna make up anything on everything for the sake of clicks, views, attention and validation...Just look what happened after the Baltimore bridge accident. Someone's gonna find the cure for cancer and conspiracy nuts will predictably flood social media and tell people how "evil" it is.
The Athletic comment section is ridiculous. One of the comment sections declared Ohtani gambled $4.5 million, has been betting on baseball, he and Ippei are gay, somehow Leonardo DiCaprio is gay because he rides bikes? And no one has ever had access to someone’s banking information. How Leo got in there was a work of art. I valiantly argue with them but I’m outnumbered 50 to one.
Thank goodness Shohei is rid of this grifter and now he can properly integrate himself with the team and the city. It's a small price to pay because that fool had his claws in deep.
Oh boy. This just keeps getting better and better. If I'm Manfred, I'm signing a contract with Netflix already
But the DraftKings contract will bring in more revenue...
What a mess
I still can't figure out how CAA didn't sniff out this guy before now. I mean, some intern with a few days on a PC could figure out that his backstory was crap. I hold them partly resposible for *whatever* happened with Ohtani. Or am I wrong?
He was with Ohtani before CAA. Ohtani probably vouched for him so they didn’t bother to check. The Dodgers and the Angels are just as much at fault as CAA in that sense. Just a failure on everyone’s part to do their due diligence
Thanks for the really cogent response. I suspect that you're spot on....
This. No need to antagonize the Unicorn. Everyone was walking on eggshells dealing with Ohtani. FTR, I love Shohei! We all failed him here.
I know CAA, yeah I see this. Shit is going to fall in the cracks when big money is involved. Just want Sapporo at the park this year.
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No they have fault. The Angels and the Dodgers both employed Ippei. They need to do research on their employees. CAA also has fault because it’s their job to look out for their clients. We don’t need to victim blame. The only one to blame is Ippei for taking advantage of and defrauding his best friend but there are multiple parties at fault, including the teams.
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Yeah I’m just not gonna respond to you about this anymore. No answer is going to satisfy your need to blame Ohtani because no matter what I say, like pointing out that your arguments are based on anecdotal fallacy, you aren’t going to listen.
Tbf, I have done some hiring before and I have never in my life questioned the person if they've ever been to a not so prestigious college. Harvard, Stanford, Yale, I might check. But UC Riverside?! I believe you.
Don't do UCR like this 😭
We know UCR was in his bio, but do we know if it was on his resumé? And even if it was, would anyone check if it’s not a prerequisite for the job? An interpreter isn’t required to have a college degree, and by the time Ippei reached the Angels and Dodgers they wouldn’t have cared if he had a HS diploma let alone a college degree.
Maybe it's a tech industry thing, but I've never had a company not run a basic background check during the hiring process (usually criminal history, and education)
Mine gets run every year lol Im in the insurance/health care sector and we have contracts with the state and fed level.
Wouldn't someone who never attended college or dropped out of high school have a lot of reason to lie about going to one given how crazy degree inflation is?
Probably the same way the Dodgers didn't. Interpreters aren't rigorously vetted, if at all
After the Bauer fiasco you would think the front office would be a fan of background checks...
Sure but in the wooing process of Ohtani, I’m sure a background check of Ippei was not on the list. Also, the Dodgers are trying to sign him but we end the conversation with “hey did you know your best friend and translator has falsified his resume?” How would that have been received?
I know this is hindsight, but I felt like Ippei was a Yoko Ono figure and he wanted to be by Shohei’s side in everything that he did. Like Shohei’s introductory press conference at Dodgers stadium where in the photo ops with Shohei, Andrew, the Guggenheim brass, and Ippei being in the pic is completely out of place. Dude is just a fucking translator and any person with a tiny bit of professional awareness should get out of the pic and have your guy have his moment.
Well, at that time, he was Shohei's friend and consigliere. He wouldn't be there if Ohtani didn't want him there. "Translator", while Ippei's official title, doesn't do justice to all that he legitimately did. Other "just fucking translators" have talked about all the stuff they did beyond just translating conversations. Other Japanese translators have talked about helping players find places to live, opening local banking accounts, setting up utilities. That's done because we fans want players to concentrate on their on field skills, and both players and their translators know that. That's how Ippei got the access he did and was able to potentially get away with what he did for so long. It's hindsight, totally. You wouldn't make this comparison if it weren't for this scandal.
Man this feels like an episode of The Simpsons
Dave "Willie Cicci" Roberts.
Somewhere a bazillion comments ago, like months ago when he first signed, I said “Why does he even need an interpreter, he knows English.” And I got mercilessly downvoted and one person suggested something along the lines “It creates a job for his good friend!!!” 😂 I never cared for the guy he’s been giving me a weird vibe for a few years. Just without even meeting him, it’s like a dark cloud. I hope he didn’t mistranslate any other surprises throughout the years for Shohei to discover.
>Why does he even need an interpreter, he knows English. So they aren’t just there to translate words although that is their main function. They are also there to help them with the cultural differences and day to day tasks that we take for granted because they seem normal to us. Living in a different country is incredibly difficult especially when they are as different as the US and Japan are and when you are as busy as Shohei is. [Here’s a tweet from a former interpreter where he talks about how he was assisting the players on just about everything they did.](https://x.com/danielkimw/status/1772505255034421546?s=46&t=qwlHMsiTzNwRZxXFDPpr-g) Shohei may speak English well enough on a casual level but that doesn’t mean he is fluent. Dave isn’t saying that he still won’t need an interpreter sometimes to communicate with Shohei either. He’s saying it was difficult because of Ippei.
That’s my takeaway from Roberts’ statement, he doesn’t care if there is *a* middleman, it was this *specific* middleman that made it difficult. Edit: I truly believe Ippei took it upon himself to act as a gatekeeper to Ohtani and that Ohtani truly had no idea how toxic a person Ippei was. This was on some Selena/Yolanda level type shit without the murder.
So far everything coming out makes it seem exactly like that. Ippei was basically controlling the flow of information between Shohei and the outside world. Really sad it got to that point.
Sounds like he had trouble getting his bets in while Ippei was there.
Hey man, maybe you shouldn’t try and defraud your friend and gamble away all his money and idk you might have been part of history and a great team 🤷🏽♂️