Crossing the language barrier

I don't have a television, so perhaps I'm just way behind the times, but the interviews in this piece strike me as very odd.  Roland Buerk asks Japanese people questions in English and they answer in Japanese, with English dubbing.  Is this the way that all multilingual telly interviews are done these days?  Are we supposed to pretend that the nice chap from the BBC has a New Testament gift of tongues?  British people have always been under the impression their English will be understood by everyone abroad if they shout it loudly enough at them, and this isn't going to dissuade anyone from this view.