Volkswagen CEO speaks English

It seems that Matthias Müller was speaking in acoustically confusing surroundings at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit:

Frankly spoken, it was a technical problem. We made a default, we had a … not the right interpretation of the American law. And we had some targets for our technical engineers, and they solved this problem and reached targets with some software solutions which haven’t been compatible to the American law. That is the thing. And the other question you mentioned — it was an ethical problem? I cannot understand why you say that.

(I have the impression that the word ‘default’ is popular with Germans speaking bad English). Colleagues wonder why he was not accompanied by an interpreter. The interview can be heard here. Müller was allowed a ‘do-over’ later:

Mueller: I have to apologize for yesterday evening because the situation was a little bit difficult for me to handle in front of all these colleagues of yours and everybody shouting. OK. Thank you very much for coming again and giving me the opportunity to say some words.

NPR: When we talked yesterday, the key line seemed to be that this was a technical error. Which sounds to us in English, like, “Oops.” When it wasn’t an oops. It was more than a technical error. It seemed to be intentional.

Mueller: Yeah, the situation is, first of all we fully accept the violation. There is no doubt about it. Second, we have to apologize on behalf of Volkswagen for that situation we have created in front of customers, in front of dealers and, of course, to the authorities. …

I don’t quite understand what Müller means by ‘I cannot understand whether you say that'(corrected in this second transcript to ‘why you say that’).

Details of the lawsuit against Volkswagen here.

LATER NOTE: Richard Schneider reports that Müller intends always to use an interpreter in future appearances in the USA. He apparently understood ‘ethical’ as ‘technical’ in the above story.

5 thoughts on “Volkswagen CEO speaks English

  1. It is an albeit inadvertently smart tactic to be tongue-tied in Denglish ‘in front of customers and dealers’ when referring to a massive US lawsuit against the company – and also for a BBC native-German correspondent sociologist-cum-anthropologist in Berlin to be virtually unintelligible in ‘English’ onscreen when explaining the behaviour of immigrant primates on Cologne Main Railway Station on New Year’s Eve.

  2. My knowledge of cars in China comes from Peter Hessler’s ‘Country Driving’. But my Honda Jazz was built in China!

  3. Hi Colleen,
    Is RSS no good for you? You need to go to the main page (Home) and that gives links to RSS for entries and comments, on the right-hand side. Thanks for your interest.

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