Better Translate Than Never

This sketch was inspired by a 04 June 2021 postgame interview with the Los Angeles Angels pitcher/hitter Shohei Ohtani. Mr. Ohtani does not speak English, so he must rely on an interpreter to field and answer questions from the media. Ohtani’s translator, Ippei Mizuhara, is good at interpreting Baseball Japanese to Baseball English. But if you don’t speak Baseball English, his translation won’t do any good. So in order make baseball more accessible to a wider audience (especially fans of eighteenth century novels), additional interpreters are required. Since we here at CoBaD know Spanish a little and don’t know Japanese at all, we changed the pitcher in this skit to a Spanish-speaking one.

As a side note, although the inspiration of this skit was from an interview of a Major League Baseball (MLB) player, the name of the team (LEAP Blowers), the strange companies advertised on the screen in the background, and the silly premise (where you have a panel of four interpreters, including the one speaking into Captain Splatman’s earpiece who is translating reporters’ questions into Layman’s Terms English) seems right at home in Minor League Baseball (MiLB). So this skit is partially a salute to the wonderfully oddball minor leagues: the theme nights, the bobblehead doll giveaways, the celebrity appearances, the mascots and the weird uniforms. In our opinion, MiLB is so much more fun than the comparatively buttoned-down MLB.

Voiceover: “…Manuel “Five Speed” Transmission,” for more on Manuel, see the “Hasty Worst” sketch.

Voiceover: “…his Baseball Spanish translator, Mr. Nick "The Can" Don-DeRoad, President, Chairman and Chief Deafening Officer of the People’s Democratic Republic of Over the Fence Technologies…” For more on Over the Fence Technologies (as well as the companies featured on the screen behind the translators), see the “Hasty Worst” sketch.

Voiceover: “…Mr. Henry "You Can Trust Me Because I Don’t Have a Middle Name In Quotation Marks” Fielding” – Mr. Fielding’s responses are intended to spoof Henry Fielding (1707-1754), but could also easily be making fun of the narrating styles of Charles Dickens (1812-1870) and Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). All three novelists had the uncanny ability to put together a paragraph-long response to a question that everyone else on the face of the Earth could answer in two sentences, styles which Sir Humphrey Appleby of "Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister" would quite enjoy. For more on Henry Fielding, see the “Bundle of Workplace Comfort and Joy” sketch.

One of our cast members noted that many individuals who had middle names in quotation marks tended to be drug lords or gangsters (e.g., Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, George “Machine Gun” Kelly Barnes, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, etc.). So we here at CoBaD are naturally apprehensive about trusting someone with a middle name in quotes.

Voiceover: “…author of “Tom 'I Know How Make Up My Mind Because I Don’t Have a Hyphen in My Last Name' Jones…” – We here at CoBaD are fine with women, who, upon getting married, choose to take their husband’s names. We are also equally fine with women, who, upon getting married, decide to keep their maiden names (e.g., for professional reasons). Going with both (i.e., placing the maiden name first and the married name last, separating the two with a hyphen) just looks indecisive. It’s the equivalent of wearing socks with sandals.

Voiceover: “…and his Layman’s Terms English translator, Captain Matt “Splatman ‘Gas’ Blaster” B-a-s-t-a-r-d-s-o-n of the Baal County Police Department.” - For more on the history of Captain Splatman, see the “An Animated Discussion” and “A Chromatic Incident” sketches.

Dr. Steven Milkman: “Hey, man, like I have a question…” - For more on Dr. Steven Milkman, see the “Obedience to Questioning Authority” and “The Stanford Trial Experiment” sketches.

Henry Fielding: “…And so, in a word, and not to give the appearance of being voluminous, and upon further reflection, it is imperative to demonstrate to the one who directs my services that I can evince inveteracy and exceed the frames to the tune of seven, and perhaps, just perhaps, he will permit me to cast the ball for 100 percent of the duration of a non-precipitation-truncated competition.” - In the novel “Tom Jones,” almost every time the narrator used the phrase “in a word,” it was followed by more than one word. In the beginning of Book 8, Chapter 9, for example, he used the phrase “in a word” and the sentence didn’t end until 85 words later.

Voiceover: “Mr. Fielding appears courtesy of “Why The Hell Are You Here” Middleman Translator Service, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Jellia Jamb Society of Misinterpreters.” – For more on The Jellia Jamb Society of Misinterpreters, see the “Witless Twit Nitwit Skit Fix Quick Tip of the Day (Ft. Stogie and Stacy)” skit. We think that the presence of Mr. Fielding, like Miss Jamb, evokes a general feeling of “What purpose are you serving here, you babbling idiot?” Strangely enough, though, Mr. Fielding does serve a useful role in the last half of the skit. Note that the Layman’s Terms English translation of Dr. Milkman’s question is never revealed. Captain Splatman interprets the question internally (without assistance from the translator speaking to him in his earpiece) and delivers Dr. Milkman’s question in Eighteenth Century English Novelist English to Mr. Fielding. It is only when we “swim upstream” to the long-winded and obfuscating Mr. Fielding that we can get some sort of idea as to what Dr. Milkman’s question was when he delivers it (in Baseball English, of course) to Mr. Don-DeRode.

English/Spanish translations are courtesy Google Translate.

References:

Bollinger, R. (2021, June 5). Another first for Ohtani in 10-strikeout gem. MLB.com. https://www.mlb.com/news/shohei-ohtani-raisel-iglesias-lead-angels-to-win

Fielding, H. (1985). The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling. (R.P.C. Mutter, Ed.). Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1749)

Hill, B. (2023, April 4). Minor League promos to look forward to in 2023. https://www.mlb.com/news/minor-league-promos-to-look-forward-to-in-2023