The Spanish community ArcadiaFighters posted a Spanish translation of an interview with the second finalist of EVO2k11, Latif, who recently announced was joining Team Razer (related video). Here you have the original English version of this interview by Vakala!
ArcadiaFighters— First of all congratulations on your well-deserved second place at EVO.
Latif— Thank you very much!
AF— As usual in our interviews, we would like to know a little more about yourself: do you study or work? What are your hobbies? What music do you like?
L— My name is Abdulatif aka Latif. I was born and raised in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, I’m here in the US on a student visa, I got a scholarship to continue my education in the United States after doing well in my senior year in high school. I am currently studying at University of Arizona majoring in Finance!!
I enjoy spending my time hanging out with friends and playing soccer as a hobby but I haven’t been doing it much since school has been getting tough >:( and of course playing Street Fighter.
I also like to listen to any type of music except for metal!
AF— Now let’s see your gamer side, we would like to know how many hours a day do you play, what is your training routine, if you do it offline or online, against whom….
L— A lot of people think that I play 24/7 a day Poongko style but that’s not true haha, the only time where I spent so much time playing the game was in summer vacation in order to prepare for EVO, I played around 7 hours a day. My training routine was pretty much playing online mode, sometimes ranked just to play against all kind of players randomly then move on to endless if I wanted to test something or was uncertain about a specific match up. Almost every day I played I learned something new which made me go to training mode to test more stuff in the lab about what I learned and brain storm a bit to figure out additional stuff.
AF— What do you think about the changes of 2012 version, specially about Viper changes? Will you continue picking her? What would be the tier list?
L— I like the 2012 changes, it seems that a lot of characters in the game will equally likely do well in tournaments, it will be much more balanced than AE. I honestly thought super was very balanced but after AE got released everything changed, characters that didn’t need a nerf got nerfed and vice versa. I’m still going to play Viper in AE2012 and looking forward to her new changes.
I think there are going to be a lot of A tier characters in this version, if there is to happen to be a one S tier character that would be Seth since he kind of remained the same from AE while all the other top characters got nerfed.
AF— Many of us have suffered the obscene amount of damage Viper inflicts with a simple combo, ”flautas de Viper” as we call them in Spain. Do you think Viper is a bit broken? Do you think she is S tier?
L— I think Viper is definitely one of the top characters in the game but I won’t say that she’s broken, she seems broken when someone wins with her against a player that has no clue on what to do against her, she’s a character that you need to play against a lot in order to know how to beat her. She’s a hard character to win with against high level players since she’s been the same for three years with only slight nerfs from version to version. Also, Viper isn’t a standard character, to beat her you have to beat the player. Each player makes Viper seem to be a completely different character, if Viper was a broken/easy character to win with as most people claims her to be, everyone would be playing her by now, it almost took 3 years to get the character to its maximum potential and still no one won any solo international major with her yet.
AF— Here’s a question a bit compromising: in your opinion, who is the best Viper in the world? Many japanese players say that in Japan there is no Viper as good as yours, what do you think?
L— It felt really great hearing that but I can’t say who is the best Viper player since I am myself a Viper player lol. Other players should decide that.
AF— And who are the best SF players right now?
L— I don’t think there is a best street fighter player as of right now, the competition is very close and every major you see a new face doing well in a tournament or winning the whole thing. There are always upsets in majors! Its really hard to decide but in my opinion the most consistent ones are probably Kazunoko and Daigo. Maybe this will change in AE2012.
AF— Are you happy with your performance at EVO or did you expected to win it? You beated many of the favourite players (like Daigo or Poongko), how do you feel about it?
L— I felt really happy about my EVO performance, my main goal was to reach top 8, never thought I would end up getting second place! My training sessions paid off very well I guess lol.
AF— What do you think about Daigo’s performance? Many people were disappointed with him, weren’t you?
L— Daigo did very well at EVO, he was the favorite player to win the whole tournament, that’s why people were disappointed in his performances. The competition was very strong, anyone could have won that day.
AF— After EVO we read you were changing your sponsor, why is that? What do you expect from this new sponsorship?
L— Yes, I have already signed my contract with the new sponsorship that will be announced at SCR, I left BT because the new sponsorship will provide me more oppurtunities to travel to a lot of International tournaments in the future..
AF— This year and next one lots of new games will come out (SFxT, UMvC3, SC5…). Are you going to play any of them seriously or will you remain playing SF exclusively?
L— I’ll probably only play UMvC3 and SFxT seriously.
AF— Have you tried any of these games? Do you see them competitive?
L— I have only played UMVC3 for about an hour and haven’t played against any other players yet but from what I saw there are a lot of random factors in the game but that doesn’t mean that it’s not competitive, as long as there are many good players and a big scene for it it’ll be competitive.
AF— Thanks for your cooperation, we hope to see you soon in our country!!!
L— Thank you for having me and I hope the same too. 
Related posts:
Nice. Happy to see Latif travel more in 2012. I hope in Europe