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Square Enix Head Not So Into English

Youichi Wada, president and CEO of video game giant Square Enix and regular Twitter user, tossed off a rather amusing language-related tweet yesterday. In response to some other Japanese companies with international markets who’ve switched all internal communication from Japanese to English, he remarked (roughly):

“I’d switch internal communications to C before I’d switch to English!!”

As amusing as the image of Square Enix issuing all company memos in C++ is, one can see why the suggestion of forcing your Japanese staff to learn and use a second language even while at the home office might rub you the wrong way.

It’s also either mildly ironic or very appropriate that one of the first Japanese game companies to do high-quality international localization would stick to their native language at home, and certainly appropriate in light of their core business being not just RPGs, but J-RPGs.

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