About

Translator San (a.k.a "He Just Doesn't Give a Fuck") refers to Japanese-English interpreter Takayuki Nushida who became the subject of an exploitable photoshop meme after translating at an E3 event using a pen and notepad.

Origin

At Sony's press conference at E3 2009 held on June 2nd, Kazunouri Yamauchi, the CEO of Polyphony Digita gave a presentation for an upcoming Gran Turismo title for PlayStation Portable. Yamauchi was accompanied by an interpreter who opted to read his hand-written translations from a notepad, rather than the conventional real-time translation that is more commonly used during press conferences.

Spread

Nushida's dillegent note-taking was seen by many viewers as comically out of place and aloof, instantly leading to a lengthy photoshop thread^[1] on 4chan's /v/ (video games). Later that day, a YouTube video of the presentation titled "He Just Doesn't Give a Fuck" was uploaded, receiving over 100,000 views in the first two years. Soon, more photoshopped pictures of the GT5 translator began to surface across sites like NeoGAF^[1], Kotaku^[2], the IGN boards^[3], Game Trailer Forums^[4], and the Japanese blog Hatimaki.^[5] Between June 9th and June 10th, two YouTube compilation videos showcasing the photoshopped variations from the aforementioned threads were uploaded.

Redux at 2010 E3

On June 17th, 2010, both Kazunouri Yamauchi and Takayuki Nushida appeared on gaming TV network G4's to discuss the release of Gran Turismo 5 on Sony's PlayStation 3.

Notable Examples

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Search Interest

Search queries spiked in June of 2009, immediately after the E3 event, and dramatically fell off until June the following year around the same time as E3 2010.

External References