International Collaborations, Elections, and the Subtleties of Language

An election was just held to decide who would work alongside Koichiro Nishikawa of Kyoto University as the first International Co-Spokesperson for the collaboration of a couple of hundred physicists working on the T2K Experiment.

When Dave Wark, my colleague at Imperial, was nominated as a candidate, I offered him a bit of advice to help him advance his international credentials -- through the words "yoroshiku onegai shimasu" which is what Japanese politicians spew after every other sentence during election campaigns. It roughly translates to, well, er, ...according to one web page:

"I suppose every language has a number of expressions that defy translation into another language. One of the Japanese phrases that belong to this category would be 'Yoroshiku onegai shimasu.'", then going on to say:

"Thus, if I were to be forced to translate the phrase 'Yoroshiku onegai shimasu.' into English, I would say, 'I hope you will take care of ( someone / something ) in a way that is convenient for both you and me. (I count on your cooperation.)'"

Which sounds utterly shameless in this context....

My personal translation, which is what I gave Dave, was that it expresses a desire for "the concept of pursuing goodness, correctness". Beautiful.

I think he might have used the phrase at a meeting or two, though whether anyone actually understood him is unknown.

He didn't listen to my other suggestion that he ought to become the first physicist to launch a spokesperson election campaign on YouTube, however.



But now, the speculation is over. I can sense the tension in the imperialhep.blogspot.com readership.

The results were announced earlier today, and despite not having a YouTube election campaign, it turns out that Dave has been elected by a majority of the vote.

Whether our new International Co-Spokesman will ever visit us on this blog remains to be seen. Dave?