A he-said, he-said story

Cubs right fielder Kosuke Fukudome is trying to do most of his talking this season with his bat.

But 3-for-3 scream sessions aside, Fukudome's voice -- in this language, anyway -- belongs to a 31-year-old former college tennis player who lives in Sarasota, Fla., and never has played a game of baseball in his life.

You want to know what Fukudome thinks about his so-so spring training, his huge day in his Cubs debut Monday or all of those standing ovations and ''Fu-Ku-Do-Me'' chants he got, you ask Ryuji Araki. Unless you know Japanese.

Araki, the Cubs' first Japanese translator, is the go-to guy for manager Lou Piniella for lineup discussions with Fukudome, for adviser Billy Williams for advice about Wrigley Field's right-field wall and for teammates making dinner plans with the new guy.

That makes Araki a thicker-haired, shorter shadow for Fukudome at the ballpark, though he's known, less glamorously, as ''his interpreter.'' He's the guy wearing khakis in the outfield during batting practice, the guy standing quietly and conspicuously to the side when Fukudome pulls on his socks in the clubhouse and the guy getting almost as much air time and ink before and after the games.

''It's been very interesting,'' says Araki, who was a just-married athletic trainer in the low minors in the Cincinnati Reds organization when the Cubs hired him to be the Voice of Fukudome after signing the Japanese All-Star to a four-year, $48 million deal in December.

It turned out Araki is the same kind of multi-tool player at his game as Fukudome appears to be at his.

Bilingual Japanese reporters say Araki does an accurate job of translating what Fukudome says, without censoring or editing away nuances -- an uncommon skill among the Japanese and Spanish translators hired by teams in recent years.

Raised on Tokyo Japanese and trained in country English, Araki got most of his second-language skills while earning an undergraduate degree at Boise State and a graduate degree at Tennessee-Chattanooga, along with a trainer assistantship at a nearby Georgia high school.

Talk about culture shock.

''The biggest difference I felt was that guns and rifles are readily available,'' he says. ''And my classmates talked about, 'Yeah, we went out hunting last week with my dad.' In Japan, it was totally gun control. You never hear about it, you never see it, you never touch it.''

Despite all those years around guns, horses and pickup trucks, he says he managed to avoid picking up any new hobbies -- except for becoming a country music fan.

''A little bit,'' he says. ''It's kind of an acquired taste.''

The Tokyo-Boise-Chattanooga life path gives Araki a unique cross-cultural perspective that helps him translate not only words, but also idioms from language to language. During Fukudome's first news conference of spring training, he translated a Japanese expression into ''whatever floats your boat.''

And despite never playing baseball or even following it as a kid, Araki learned the inner workings of teams -- and the terminology of the game -- through his work as a baseball trainer that started with an internship for the Reds' Chattanooga affiliate. That's an especially important skill in his new job, helping him understand the difference between, say, the American and British interpretations of ''shagging in the outfield.''

It all added up to an ideal skill set the Cubs sought when launching a search for Fukudome's interpreter. It started with their minor-league strength coach from Japan, Nao Masamoto (now the major-league video coordinator), putting together a list of 15 people he knew in the game who might have the qualifications.

Not that Araki has much of a skill set for playing. His first -- and, to date, only -- experience is playing catch with rehabbing players while he was a trainer in the minors. He bothers to wear a glove in the outfield before games, he says, ''just to protect myself during BP.''

But Araki, whose first exposure to English was during an eight-month sink-or-swim stretch of Boston grade school while on a family sabbatical, does seem to have been naturally drawn toward baseball.

Struggling early at Boise State with college texts and with getting established in a new country, he found inspiration in a pioneering rookie for the Los Angeles Dodgers that fall: Japanese pitcher Hideo Nomo.

''I'd see him on ESPN and saw him doing well,'' Araki says, ''and that encouraged me.''

Now he's in the big leagues himself, helping a $48 million free agent make himself heard.

Comment at suntimes.com.

Color Photo: Al Podgorski, Sun-Times / Ryuji Araki (left) is praised for his accuracy as Kosuke Fukudome's translator, particularly when it comes to preserving nuances. ; Color Photo: Ryuji Araki was thrust into English as an undergraduate at Boise State, then as a grad student at Tennessee-Chattanooga. ;