Kojima Denies PS3 Rubbish – Claims Mistranslation

There was something of a furore when Metal Gear Solid 4 creator 小島秀夫 / Hideo Kojima gave an interview to Edge and was quoted as saying “The original vision was to go ten steps further, the reality was just one step”, amongst other negative statements about the PS3 platform. Now on his own blog, he denies all, and claims it was in fact a mistranslation; his humble and self abasing Japanese was distorted through translation and cultural misinterpretation, as well as shameless media exaggeration in pursuit of page views, and so he was grievously misquoted.

I am inclined to be somewhat sceptical of such claims, even from the likes of Kojima, but I am reasonably convinced of the arguments he makes in his radio response that mistranslation and media exaggeration are to blame – apparently the final article was written up quite separately from the interview itself; what is lacking is any evidence in the form of his original words, and of course it is hardly inconceivable that he would want to distance himself from embarrassing comments with the easy option of claiming the meaning of his words was twisted. Perhaps Edge will be so kind as to provide the original Japanese if he cannot?

Also his crude characterisations of English speakers as not having any conception of modesty or humility in conversation seem rather overblown – I note that even the Edge interview manages to observe “perhaps Kojima’s being particularly modest today”. Still, there is no doubt he emphatically denies that he meant anything like what was printed in the interview.