⁠Face Behind PM’s Voice

Meet the man behind the Prime Minister’s “voice”.

For the past 17 years, MediaCorp veteran EG Yik Fan has been providing live interpretation for National Day Rally speeches. When the PM delivers the Malay segment of his speech each year, Yik Fan immediately interprets it into Chinese for Channel 8 viewers.

I first met Yik Fan in 2002, when he interviewed me for my first Chinese TV appearance on Channel 8’s Money Week (财经追击). I ended up spending a lot more time filming with him than I did with English-language interviewers, since I kept tripping over financial terms like Price/NTA and ROE in Chinese. He was probably better off as my interpreter than interviewer!