On an article about the ny transcripts yes fine it was on Jezebel someone posted this comment, which hadn't occurred to me:
It’s important to note that the whole bit about either Abe not speaking English is just pretense for his speaking to Putin. They knew they would be seated with the Japanese and, in fact, had a Japanese-English translator there with them for that purpose. So communicating with Akie would not have been a problem, English or no. The translator did not, however, speak Russian (supposedly), which is Trump’s excuse for why his meeting with Putin was private and not accompanied by anyone from the USA. Normally they would at least have a translator present, but that “wouldn’t have made sense” to have his Japanese translator accompany him over to Putin. So. It’s a shell game, keep your eye on the ball.... :)