Fans Are Confused After AI Mistranslates Masahiro Sakurai Tweet
by 
March 28, 2025
Super Smash Bros. and Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai is back in the news after his recent Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize win and his comments that he doesn’t think Japanese games should Americanize themselves for sales. This time around he’s in the news for retweeting a Nintendo tweet with a comment that was later mistranslated by AI.
The Nintendo of Japan X (Twitter) handle shared news about Nintendo Direct, which Sakurai then retweeted with the comment “ほうほう.”
Many fans who don’t speak Japanese wanted to know what he said, and they tried to translate it with AI. The problem? Grok, X’s AI, kept translating it wrong. It repeatedly said it meant “method” and then fans were really confused why he would simply say “method” to Nintendo’s news.
It appears Grok could not understand the context or the difference between hiragana and kanji writing. The word Sakurai tweeted sounds like “houhou” and a Japanese word for method is also pronounced that way, but it’s written differently and has a completely different meaning. It’s kind of like there, their and they’re in English. All Sakurai meant to do was write a laughing sound, like going, “Ha ha!” in delight to some news.
After realizing he had inadvertently befuddled many fans on X, he returned with another note: “Guess I can’t tweet so carelessly…”
Some anime and manga companies have expressed an interest to using AI to translate Japanese into other languages more quickly, while others have been strongly against the idea. You can check out Otaku USA’s interview here with translator Nate Derr on why he thinks AI is not the way to go with translations. In part of the interview, he says, “Between underlying emotional currents and things that are implied or omitted, as is often the case in comics or in Japanese, I think there’s just too much going on for a program to competently translate.”
Source: SoraNews24
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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, plus its sequel, Manga Art for Everyone, and the first-of-its-kind manga chalk book Chalk Art Manga, both illustrated by professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.