Language policy at major sporting events

Abstract

International sporting events, such as the Olympic Games, are linguistically complex events that require large-scale language planning and policy. This chapter focuses on the Olympic Games and looks at the practicalities of the attitudes and responses to multilingualism and the language policies employed in this particular international event to achieve the goals of international co-operation and friendship. It examines how language issues are planned as part of the planning of the Olympic Games and the range of activities involved in facilitating international collaboration in the preparation for and conduct of the Games.

Keywords:

• Olympic Games
• language policy
• multilingualism
• translation and interpreting

Introduction

Cultural awareness and skills have become a much sought after commodity in the organisation of international sporting events, and language skills and services (i.e. translation and interpreting) are now crucial to the success of any such event. From the translation of all official documents and formal interpreting during official ceremonies, to language specialists who can say a few words of welcome to foreign visitors in their own language, language skills are embedded into planning at different levels, to ensure a quality experience for athletes and visitors during the event, and create a legacy for communities. Language skills are also needed to supply the world media with news and information, to support signage and public information and overcome practical communication barriers in the day to day work of all those involved and/or interested in the event.

There is now a demand for information in a variety of languages at any international sporting event, in areas such as advance planning for tourist guides and visitor information, accommodation, security at airports, train stations and competition venues, facilities, catering, administration, ticketing, transport, accessibility, on arrival at welcome desks during competitions, signage, public announcements, audio and visual presentations, written advice and information brochures. Therefore, languages, and language skills, play a crucial role in making international sporting events truly global celebrations.

Given the stated aim of international sporting events to build on and improve international co-operation, and the widely acknowledged fact that this co-operation involves communication across languages and across countries, organisers of such events have to make important language policy and planning decisions to achieve their goal of reaching out to the world. However, accommodating the linguistic needs of all participants in an international sporting event is a complex exercise in language planning, which poses a number of challenges in terms of striking the right balance for including the vast majority of participants.

This chapter focuses on the Olympic Games and looks at the practicalities of the attitudes and responses to multilingualism and the language policies employed in this particular international event to achieve the goals of international co-operation and friendship.

Language skills at the Olympic Games

The founding text of the Olympic Movement, the Olympic Charter, acknowledges the importance of language skills and stipulates that ‘The official languages of the IOC are French and English’ (Article 24.1, page 53).1 The Olympic Charter is the codification of the fundamental principles, rules and by-laws adopted by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that govern the organisation and running of the Olympic Movement and sets the conditions for the celebration of the Olympic Games. Article 24.1 is the guiding principle for the provision of language services at the Olympic Games. It outlines the requirement that the Games be staged in the two official languages of the Olympic Movement, French and English. This is history and tradition at work, as the development of the modern Olympic Movement was closely related with Pierre Frédy, baron de Coubertin of France, making the French language a key language in the Olympic Movement. Other working languages of the Olympic Games are Arabic, German, Russian and Spanish. These languages are sometimes supplemented by ‘unofficial languages’. Languages spoken by large numbers of National Olympic Committees (NOCs) are often included in the official communication to allow Olympic Committees for the Organisation of the Games (OCOGs) to reach a wider audience. Olympic Solidarity, for example, publishes a number of documents in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. These particular languages make it possible for the message of official documents to reach as wide an audience as possible, with relatively low added costs.

Article 24.1 essentially charges OCOGs with the responsibility of serving Olympic family members (i.e. athletes, officials and media), the primary goal being to facilitate the communication needs of athletes, officials and international visitors. OCOGs are also responsible for making everything that is in the public domain – in other words, press releases, the media information guide, the website, brochures, signs, promotional tools and advertising campaigns, etc. – available in at least both languages.

However, for practical and long-term aims of international co-operation and exchange, OCOGs have historically tended to take languages into account at many different levels – from formal interpreting at official ceremonies, supplying news and information to the world's media, supporting signage and public information, providing medical and security services to recruiting volunteers with proven language skills to welcome foreign visitors in their own language. In the recent past, the most successful Games (Barcelona and Sydney) have been those that have gone beyond this minimum requirement of the Olympic Charter and staged multilingual Games, using other languages to reflect the egalitarian and democratic ideals of the Olympic Movement. The language initiatives at previous Games give an indication of the importance of language skills and services:

• At the 1988 Seoul Games, 5890 personnel with language skills were designated for duty assignments.

• At the 1992 Barcelona Games, 15 other languages were used in addition to the four official ones (Catalan, Spanish, English and French).

• At the Sydney 2000 Games, the multilingual switchboard operated in over 50 languages and over 1400 volunteer interpreters worked inside the venues (Pound, 2003).

Hence, nowadays the success of Olympic bids partly lies in, and is often strengthened by, the ability of candidate cities to project themselves as global cities, capable of reaching out and connecting with the world through the cultural and linguistic resources within their population. In Beijing, an outfit called the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Programme issued prefabricated phrases to workers who could not converse in any foreign language. The 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Games promise to be fully bilingual, while the 2012 London Games also commit to identifying languages as one of the top 10 skills required.2 The London 2012 bid team included 30 young Londoners speaking 28 languages among the delegation that travelled to Singapore for the IOC's host city election in July 2005. The Chair of the bid team, Sir Sebastian Coe, was quoted as saying that ‘London is the most cosmopolitan city in the world, constantly renewing itself, and is now home to 200 ethnic communities who speak a total of 300 languages. We want to involve all of these people and communities in delivering our Games’ (Collis, 2007).

The enthusiastic embrace of languages in the Olympic Games has not caught on with the Paralympic Games, because their language needs are said to be different and have specific contexts of historical development. Where the use of French in the Olympic Games, or the Olympic Movement in general, is justified by the large number of NOCs whose official language is French, this is of marginal significance in the Paralympic Games. The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) was created much later than that of the IOC, in the 1960s and 1970s, and the IPC chose English as its sole official language. This means that the host city of the Paralympic Games is only expected to communicate in English and at times in the official language of the city in question, as was the case for the 2006 Turin Winter Games, where English and Italian were used. In Beijing (2008), the languages chosen were English and Mandarin. However, with the office of the IPC being located in Germany, internal communications are in the German language.

The existence of two official languages at the Olympic Games may be viewed purely as a protocol issue, which can be enhanced by use of additional languages. However, it may also be perceived as a limitation, by which scarce funds are diverted to a possibly unnecessary area (translation and interpretation into French), instead of being used to reach a large constituency in greater need of such service. Some have gone so far as to raise concerns about multilingualism being in danger of disappearing in favour of a de facto monolingualism in English, and there are rumblings of power relations between the official languages of the Olympic Movement. But what are in fact the language service deliverables at the Olympic Games?

Language service deliverables

As has already been pointed out, OCOGs primary responsibility at an Olympic Games is to serve Olympic Family members such as the athletes, officials and media. Although it is up to each OCOG to vary the language service requirements and provision on the basis of its own sociolinguistic reality, the scope of language services for an OCOG can be extensive. From a technical perspective, the language skills deliverables at an Olympic Games is limited to the provision of translation and interpreting services to all the functional areas of an OCOG. This means two things:

1. In the run-up to the Games:

   1. Translation of a range of official documentation, including the updating of existing sports glossaries and preparing of new lexicons, rule books, official guides and signage, INFO and the Internet.

   2. Translation and interpreting of all official communications with the IOC, athletes and officially accredited press representatives.

2. At Games time:

   1. Translation of flash quotes for INFO and translation of all official communications at the various meetings of the OCOG, International Federations (IFs) and the IOC, as well as translation of weather reports (especially for sailing) and the Village Newspaper.

   2. Simultaneous interpreting at press conferences and consecutive interpreting at ceremonies, official accreditation, medical facilities, drug testing, security, transportation, procedures and disputes and information to the public.

Translation

Translation is concerned with the written conversion of a text from one language (source language) into another (target language). Over the years, translation for the Olympic Games has covered IOC and IF Periodic Reports, Chefs de Mission Dossier and Manual, Explanatory Books and Team Leaders' Manuals, Olympic Sports Glossaries, OCOG Internet Site, OCOG Scoring and Results System, Venue and Olympic Village Signage,3 Ceremony Scripts and Venue Announcements, Athletes' Biographies, Tour Scripts, Correspondence, Medical and Post-Games Reports,4 Entries and Accreditation Forms, Doping Control Manuals, Press and Olympic Broadcasting Reports, Freight Manuals, Press Guides, NOC and Press Rate Cards, Image Guidelines and other translation requirements for National Olympic and Paralympic Committees.5

Translation of signage in the lead-up and during the Games helps show that the Games are indeed a special event. In addition to its functional role for key constituent groups, such as athletes, technical officials, media and the Olympic Family, to successfully undertake their various activities within the venues and the host city, it contributes an international flavour to the event and creates an atmosphere of a coming together within the Olympic Village. All sign messages, except place names in the public domain, such as city streets and venue names (e.g. ‘Olympic Stadium’) are translated, including restaurant menus in the Olympic Village, signs at transport drop-off and pick-up points (e.g. bus stop signs), all access control signs, as well as small signs made on-site by venue staff and created ‘at the last minute’ during the Games operational period, in response to unforeseen needs, and used for signs and minor notices in back-of-house areas. Other duties included in translation are the weather reports, primarily for sailing, the Village newspaper and Minutes from the Medical Commission.

Translation also covers INFO and the Internet. The translation of INFO places emphasis on Flash Quotes and articles for consumption by the Olympic Family. A translation workflow system is usually put in place to allow for the automatic translation of news items posted on the INFO site. As it is humanly and practically impossible to translate all the items posted on INFO, only a proportion of these items are ultimately translated. The Internet is a primary public information tool. However, as is the case for INFO, translating an entire OCOG Website into English and/or French would be a significant undertaking and would possibly consume a lot of time and labour, not to speak of the cost this would entail. Hence, only the ‘static’ content of the Internet, that is to say, content of interest to the general public that is unlikely to change over the course of the organisation and staging of the Games (e.g.; general OCOG information, description of sports and venues, host city background, etc.), is often translated and made available on multilingual touch screens and information pod casts. The Internet is generally not translated at Games time, as the task of rendering results in two or three languages would simply be overwhelming and consume all available translators. In addition, most of the results information is language independent, as the names of athletes, times, weights and distances or placing need not be translated.

Translation at the Games is carried out from and into the official language of the host city, and English and French, in the first instance, and also from and mainly into Spanish, Arabic, Russian and German, as required. Games time translation work focuses on the Village newspaper, Minutes from the Chefs de Mission Meetings (French and Spanish), Minutes from the IOC Medical Commission, weather reports and other ad hoc requests.

Interpreting

The modes of interpreting used in the lead-up to and during the Olympic Games are consecutive and simultaneous interpreting. Consecutive interpreting is a mode in which the interpreter starts interpreting a partial or complete message after the speaker has stopped producing the source utterance. In practice, consecutive interpreting may be rendered when the interpreter does not have a text in its entirety or any part of the original text, but often enough information to perform their task. In the context of the Olympic Games, consecutive interpreting is an integral part of venue operations. Venue operations are primarily Games time operations that account for the vast majority of the tasks undertaken by language services. The venue operations team is responsible for the coordination and deployment of all Volunteer Language Specialists, including the Multilingual Switchboard in the Village, all translation requests at the venues and even requests for simultaneous interpreting services. This role can be quite heavily utilised and varies from sport to sport and venue to venue, as can be seen in the summary for the Sydney 2000 Games given in Table 1. Pre-Games, the Venue Operations unit provides limited services at test events, and the vast majority of effort is focused on recruiting, interviewing, testing and training of Language Specialists. Language Specialists are first asked to undertake a language assessment in both English and their other language, in the first instance. Only the spoken form of the language is assessed, as the written form is often not required. At Games time, consecutive interpreting is the face of language services at the venues.

Table 1. Language specialists statistics at the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games.¹¹

Number of languages covered	50 at the Olympic Games  30 at the Paralympic Games
Number of Language Specialists (LSs) rostered	888 for Olympic Games  241 for Paralympic Games (of which 223 also worked Olympic Games)
Number of venues	27 for Olympic Games  13 for Paralympic Games
Number of LSs travelling interstate to work in Sydney	46
Number of LSs working at interstate venues	70
Number of LSs with prior interpreting qualifications	206
Number of LSs who gained interpreting qualifications through SOCOG	338
Total number of shifts (excl. Interstate Football)	6735
Number of calls to the MLSB	3045 (Spanish 736, Russian 726, French 467)

Simultaneous interpreting, on the other hand, is where the interpreter starts interpreting while still receiving the source utterance. Simultaneous interpreting is an extremely expensive service that requires the setting up of specially designed technical facilities, the recruiting of a Chief Interpreter, and a team of experienced interpreters, preferably with a three-language combination, who command considerable honoraria, plus per diems, accommodation and airfares.

In the lead-up to the Games, the Interpreting Unit organises and facilitates a range of interpreting assignments (consecutive, as well as simultaneous) at the meetings of the Coordination Commission, the Sports Science Congress, the Chefs de Mission Seminar, the meeting of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations, the General Assembly of the IPC, the IOC Medical Commission, Press Commission, Executive Board, Juridical Commission and Session, the Executive Council of the Association of National Olympic Committees, the General Assemblies of the Fédération Internationale de Natation, the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) and International Shooting Sport Federation, the Congress and Referees Meeting if the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, the Council and Technical Meeting of the International Association of Athletics Federations and the Congress of the Fédération Internationale des Luttes Associées. Simultaneous interpreting is also provided at the General Assembly of the International Paralympic Organising Committee, in at least English, French and German, but sometimes in Spanish, Arabic and the language of the host city. Some of these meetings are the responsibility of the IOC and others the responsibility of the organising committee.

At Games time, for a 2-week period, both modes of interpreting are again required at all Medal Ceremonies, post-medal-round press conferences, post-competition press conferences at the Main Press Centre (MPC), meetings of the IOC Medical Commission, Chefs de Mission meetings at the Olympic Village, the Court of Arbitration in Sport, the daily Coordination Commission Meetings and other press conferences and meetings as required. Other key areas which require language services are the Transportation and Security Services (e.g. the police, health, emergency services and local authorities). The complexity of this process can be seen in the arrangements for the Sydney 2000 Games for which the languages represented by the group of simultaneous interpreters included Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian, while the languages represented by the group of consecutive interpreters included Arabic, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Croatian, Czech, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene and Spanish. More than 60 simultaneous interpreters, some 70 consecutive interpreters and hundreds of volunteer Language Specialists made up the interpreting team. Over 300 press conferences were covered. These included a 6–7 language team in the MPC (i.e. English, French, Spanish, Russian, German, Japanese and/or Chinese-Mandarin).

The use of simultaneous interpreting in languages other than English and French is generally predictable, as major languages used in post-competition Press conferences are a function of the athletes involved in an event and the media covering the event. The only exception to this rule of thumb is the International Court of Arbitration in Sport, where it is virtually impossible to predict who will be called before the court, and hence which language(s) will be required.

Budgetary constraints

As can be seen from the foregoing description of translation and interpreting deliverables at an Olympic Games, providing a complete range of translation and interpreting services would consume a massive component of an OCOG's operating budget. Hence, to assist in producing a truly international event, with due regard to the history and traditions of the Olympic movement, while tempering those objectives with the reality of financial responsibility and operational requirements, a critical examination of the language skills deliverables needs to be undertaken at every level and reconciled with the allocated budget, Host City Contract and Charter obligations, taking into account the audience for such publications (e.g. the Chefs' Manual and the Chefs' Dossier, reports for the IBAF or the Pan-American Sports Organisation) and the desire of the OCOG's functional areas to have their documents/reports translated. All the translation and/or interpreting requirements have to be captured and a determination must be made as to which of these actually require translation and/or interpreting. Therefore, not every translation or interpreting request can be acceded to, as judgements have to made, together with the requesting functional areas, as to the necessity of language services. This must be done as early as possible to enable the Translation and Interpreting Units to plan their workload.

The approach employed in Sydney was to scope all language requirements, cost the provision of the said requirements and then ‘cut the cloth to fit the suit’.6 For instance, with regard to translation, although it was initially assumed that any report or document intended for outside circulation should be provided in both French and English, it was very quickly established that such an objective would be impossible to achieve. The decision as to which documents were to be translated was made in conjunction with the requesting functional area and rested on whether or not the publication had been scoped and built into the translation unit's work schedule and, if the request was not scoped, whether the resources were available. If the resources were not available in-house, the translation was sent out to one of a number of contracted freelance translators, subject to the document not being of a confidential nature. As a result, no confidential correspondence was sent out to freelance translators. Many of these freelance translators were subsequently familiarised with Olympic Games terminology over the years and later recruited as full-time members of the Translation Unit. In addition to freelance translators, the Translation Unit was also supplemented with Translation Interns from the Paris-based Ecole Supérieure d'Interprètes et de Traducteurs (ESIT) and the Institut Supérieur d'Interprétation et de Traduction (ISIT), in the final stages of their translation degrees. These Translation Interns were co-opted on a two monthly rotational basis, over a period of 3 years prior to the Games, as a result of a Convention between the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) and the French government. The full text of this Convention is available in Appendix 1.

As a result, by the end of 1998, the Unit had translated a total of 854, 346 words. At the end of 1999, this total had jumped to 1,978,645 words. By June 2000, 3,301,015 of words had been translated. By the end of 1999, the total number of full-time staff in the Translation Unit had reached 12 and by June 2000, the full-time staff members peaked at 17. At Games time, the Translation Unit consisted of 60 paid staff, five of whom acted as Coordinators and Administrators. Of the remaining 55, 23 were former Translation Interns, who had previous placements within the Organising Committee (Pound, 2003).

Early in the planning process, the Translation Manager prepared an in-house Translation Guide, which included typographical conventions, a glossary, an exhaustive list of in-house jargons, together with all acronyms, NOC Codes, names of competition venues, as well as a step-by-step explanation of the Translation Workflow System. Practical guidelines were also adopted regarding which signs should be translated. This helped contain the cost and operational impact of translating signage, while still achieving the overall objectives of providing a truly bilingual event.

Hence, although the total Language Services Budget for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games was $US6.35 million, the Programme came in $US400,000 under budget, in part because of all the cost-saving measures discussed above.

Commercial imperatives, power relations and political interference

Although the IOC's language policy is clear, the OCOG's willingness to go beyond the minimum requirement of using the two official languages, as well as some of the working languages, when required, to meet the demands of some NOC delegations or individuals within the IOC Executive,7 has the potential to encourage ‘unreasonable’ language services requests (e.g. Ukrainian, rather than Russian or Cuban Spanish, instead of Castilian Spanish), especially in the new and challenging context of the rise of nationalisms around the world. Pressed on all sides by a complex mix of political correctness and commercial imperatives, many OCOGs bend over backward to accommodate language requests, extending the range of languages to practically all those spoken in their community.

Commercial imperatives

Many candidate and host cities have come to the realisation that language skills are critical to support tourism and customer service before and after the Games and see the use of languages already spoken in their community as an opportunity to project the image of global cities, in an attempt to attract international visitors and boost their tourism industry. Language skills and cultural understanding for those in frontline roles have the power to build closer, more responsive customer relationships and transform attitudes, and taking full advantage of the ‘halo effect’ of global media coverage prior to and during the Games, Games-related tourism has been shown to grow significantly many years after the Games. Evidence from Australia indicates that the island continent down under recorded an additional 1.6 million visitors between 1997 and 2001, spending well over $AU 4.3 billion. London in 2012 expects in-bound tourism to deliver a similar result for Britain's international visitor economy.

Overriding this flexibility, however, are the commercial imperatives of sponsors who want to market their products in the language(s) that will bring them the best benefits. So, although everyone has agreed that effective multilingual communications can enhance the successful delivery of the Olympic Games, many Games sponsors will only advertise their products and services in English. The stereotypical view that ‘everyone speaks English’ has become entrenched even within OCOGs, through the international contingent of ‘Olympic Games Specialists’, who move on from Games to Games every 4 years and are responsible for key aspects of the planning and staging of the Games. These Olympic Games Specialists caused some significant incidents to occur at the Sydney 2000 Games, when the technology provider attempted to thwart the translation of the OCOG's website into French8 and when translations from French into English were farmed out to a private translation agency in Spain.9 A striking example of the lack of understanding of the role of language skills – translation in this case – in the organising and staging the Games was shown through the ‘genuine’ attempt of one of these Olympic Games Specialists to bypass the Translation Unit, or ‘make things easier for them’ as he put it. The benevolent Olympic Games Specialist proceeded to translate the Athlete Biography Form from English into French, with the following results.10

What Table 2 shows is a number of mistranslations. The word ‘state’ or place of origin in Item 4 for instance is rendered as ‘to assert or affirm’ when back translated from the attempted translation into French. Likewise, Item 14 (‘Boxing’) can be back translated as ‘to pack or package’, Item 20 (‘Fencing’) can be back translated as ‘to enclose or fence in’. The first reaction upon reading these translations may be to smile, then eventually laugh. However, one quickly begins to get irritated upon reading items such as 13 and 15 in which the same words right hand are translated as relevez in 13, a term that can have a number of back translations into English, including ‘to stand up, to lift up, to put up, to turn up, to roll up, to raise, etc.’, then as ‘le droit’ in 15, which can be back translated as ‘the law’. In items 6, 9 and 17, whole phrases such as ‘are you currently competing’ are rendered as ‘est vous rivaliser actuellement’, which makes no sense in French, ‘major injuries’ as ‘blessures du commandant’, the back translation of which is ‘injuries of the major/commander’, and ‘Reach (in inches or centimetres)’ as ‘La portée (dans les pouces ou les centimètres)’, which once again makes no sense in French. When they are not nonsensical, almost all the examples provided in Table 2 above border on the comical.

Table 2. Translation into French of the Athlete Biography Form by an Olympic Games Specialist.

English	French
1. Full family name	Le Nom de la Famille plein
2. Full given name	Le Nom Donné plein
3. Other family names (Surname/s) if they exist	L'autre Famille Nomme (Surname(s) si ils existent
4. STATE	AFFIRMEZ
5. Height	La hauteur
6. Country of current citizenship (for which country are you currently competing)	Pays de citoyenneté courante (pour que le pays est vous rivaliser actuellement)
7. Marital Status: common law/de facto	La situation maritale : facto du law/de veuf
8. Spouse given name	L'épouse nom donné
9. Have you had any major injuries, and for how long did they prevent you from participating in your sport?	Est-ce que vous avez eu des blessures du commandant, et pour comment long est-ce qu'ils vous ont prévenus de participer à votre sport?
10. CYCLING	FAIRE DU VELO
11. Doubles Partner's Name	Double le Nom du Partenaire
12. Batting handedness	Le frappant handedness
13. Right (hand)	relevez
14. BOXING	EMPAQUETER
15. Right (hand)	Le droit
16. DIVING	PLONGER
17. Reach (in inches or centimetres) measured from left fingertips and right fingertips when arms are extended to each side and parallel to the ground	La portée (dans les pouces ou les centimètres) a mesuré de bouts du doigt gauches et bouts du doigt du droit quand les bras sont étendus à chaque côté et placent parallèlement à la terre
18. Career winnings (as of May 1, 1998)	Le winnings de la carrière (comme du 1 mai 1998)
19. Number of years competing internationally	Nombre d'années qui rivalisent internationalement
20. FENCING, WRESTLING	CLOTURER, LUTTER

This example not only suggests a complete lack of understanding of the skills involved in translation, it also shows the degree to which the work of translators is underestimated, presumably because all they have to do is look up a dictionary, a task that any ‘intelligent’ monolingual or bilingual can easily carry out, if they take the time. These sorts of attitudes, which are sometimes prevalent within OCOGs when it comes to Article 24.1 of the Olympic Charter, seriously complicate the work of the Language Services Division and make it even harder for the Division to achieve the objectives of its brief in a tense environment of political intrigue and power relations. Underestimating the place and role of language skills also has a direct flow-on effect on the political context surrounding the Games.

Power relations and political interference

Political interference and the reasons for friction and frustration in the area of language management at the Olympic Games often arise from a direct competition between the two official languages. One subtle aspect of this competition lies in Article 24.3, which reads as thus: ‘In case of divergence between the French and English texts in the Olympic Charter or any other IOC document, the French text shall prevail unless expressly provided otherwise in writing.’ Article 24.3 imposes a heavy burden on translators within an OCOG, when translating source texts from English or any other language into French, for, although they are not about the Olympic Charter or issued by the IOC, the status of translations into French is always scrutinised for accuracy and, in many cases, is used to help revise the original text drafted in other languages.

As a result of the competition between the two official languages, France vigorously defends the use of its language at the Olympic Games, especially in view of the increasing use of English in the international arena. French officials do not miss any opportunity to remind and urge the IOC ‘to protect the spirit and letter of the Olympic Charter’, by ensuring that French is always used alongside English as one of the Games' official languages. In France, an Inter-Ministerial group called ‘French, the Language of Sports’, comprising representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Sports and the General Delegation for the French Language of the Ministry of Culture, as well as the International Francophone Organisation and a number of translation schools (ESIT and ISIT), is responsible for ensuring that the French language is used in the field of sports, and mainly during the Olympic Games. Hence, in Atlanta, Nagano, Sydney, Salt Lake City, Athens, Turin and Beijing, strategic partnerships were established between the respective Organising Committees and the French Government, in most cases through the local French Embassy, to facilitate the translation of documentation, key reports and other publications into the French language in the period leading up to and during the Games. These partnerships gave highly qualified but inexperienced translators, mainly from the top two translation schools in France, the opportunity to develop their practical translation skills under the tutelage of the OCOG's Translation Manager. These partnerships generally included:

• sponsoring translation interns, mainly from ESIT and ISIT, to help in the translation of the Olympic Games website, manuals, guides, newsletters and reports;

• updating the Lexicon of Sporting Terms into the languages of the Olympic and Paralympic Games to be published in collaboration with the Institut National du Sport et de l'Education Physique (INSEP) of Paris; and, in some cases,

• French language lessons for staff members of the OCOG who wish to be involved.

In spite of this, major incidents occur every now and again, illustrating the fierce competition between the two official languages for world hegemony.12 Hence, due in part to the precedent of the language of the host country being used at the Games Opening Ceremonies at the Lillehammer and Nagano Winter Games, as well as the Atlanta Summer Games, no one – from the Governor General to a television news-reader at the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS)13 – was prepared to read a short 17-word statement at the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Games in Australia. This prompted the then French Minister for Cooperation and Francophonie, Charles Josselin, to put out a statement, which read: ‘The guarantee of the Olympic Games’ independence comes through respect for the Olympic Charter [and] it is the responsibility of the IOC to ensure it' (Josselin, 2000). Even the then French President, Jacques Chirac, was reported to personally have asked the then IOC President, Juan Samaranch, to try to convince Sir William to speak French at the Opening Ceremony, but even the then French Ambassador's offer of a quick brush-up course in French failed to convince the Governor General.14 The place and role of French is also a matter of concern in the context of the Paralympic Games. In evidence given before the Canadian Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages, Senator Champagne pointedly asked: ‘where we should go to suggest gently but firmly to the IPC that they should make sure that French is reinstated as a language regularly used by the Paralympic Games …’ (Parliament of Canada, 2007).

Conclusion

The Olympic Games have enormous potential to showcase the skills of language professionals and generate enthusiasm for language learning at all levels. If a monolingual approach to such global events is obviously not an option, a bilingual approach is also far from satisfactory; but both the IOC and the OCOGs have to be cognizant of the practicality and cost of running an Olympic Games in a plethora of languages. When dealing with some 200 NOCs the world over, it makes economic and logistical sense for Games organisers to restrict the official languages to a select few. For historical and other reasons, these happen to be French, English (and German for the Paralympic Games).

However, as the intended recipients of Olympic information on a global scale need that information to be made available to them in more than two languages, this policy needs to be flexible. For example, Spanish, as the language spoken by nearly half of the NOCs of the Americas, deserves much more attention than it has been accorded thus far. Indeed, beyond Spanish, the IOC may have to investigate ways in which issues relating to language in general (i.e. apart from French and English) can be better accommodated on a case by case basis, so that the ‘thrill of victory’ of the Thugwanes of the world15 or their ‘agony of defeat’ is expressed, in their own words, to the rest of the world.16 In other words, the practical and political dimensions of language planning in international collaboration still have a long way to go, even in the realm of sporting events that some claim to have nothing to do with politics.17

Notes on contributors

Paulin Djité is Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of Western Sydney. He was the manager of the Translation Unit at the Sydney 2000 Games and subsequently a Consultant for the Languages Services Division of the Athens Olympic Games. He continues to act as a Language Expert for various divisions of the IOC (i.e. NOC, Olympic Solidarity) and other Games-related bodies such as the Event Knowledge Services. This contribution is largely based on his experience working for the Olympic Movement over the last decade.

Notes

The full text of the Olympic Charter, in force as at 7 July 2007, is available at multimedia.olympic.org/pdf/en_report_122.pdf, last accessed February 18, 2008.

It is estimated that 70,000 Language Specialists, including language specialists, will be needed during the 2012 London Games. See www.rln-london.com/pdf/pressrelease_cbilondonsurvey.pdf and www.rln-london.com/pdf/talkingtotheworld.pdf, last accessed December 12, 2007.

Translation of signage is often complemented by the use of pictograms (for sports and services) and most of these signs are primarily colour, symbol and number based. At the Sydney 2000 Games, 32,000 signs were produced for the venues and Sydney Olympic Park Common Domain, 65% (approximately 20,000 signs) of which included messages in French.

Most Post-Games Reports are contracted out to Translation Agencies, as the OCOG's Translation Unit is usually disbanded after the official end of the Games.

In the pre-Games phase of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, the translation unit of the SOCOG translated approximately 4,000,000 words: 225,000 words in 1997, 620,000 in 1998, 1,450,000 in 1999 and 2,700,000 in the period till July 2000.

Whereas in Sydney the assessment was made mainly as to which documents should be translated into French, in Athens and Beijing it is reasonable to assume that most documents meant for outside consumption were drafted in Greek and Mandarin and then translated into French and English.

In the lead-up to Sydney 2000, although he did not make such request, interpreting services were made available in Catalan for Juan Antonio Samaranch (the former IOC President), rather than in Castilian Spanish.

A number of group emails exchanged between the headquarters of the technology provider and their representative in Sydney landed on the desk of the manager of the Translation Unit. This deeply embarrassed the technology provider and strengthened the hand of the Translation Unit in making the case for a balanced language service in English and French. Considering Article 24.1 of the Olympic Charter, this sort of incidents is most unfortunate.

It was later revealed that the manager of the division in question did not believe that the SOCOG Translation Unit was up to the task, in part because he did not trust the head of that Unit, a black African, to have native fluency and competence in French. When the IOC became aware of problems with the translations done in Spain, however, this manager deftly tried to shift the blame onto a lack of oversight by the SOCOG translation Unit.

Needless to say, this Olympic Games Specialist was at a loss to understand what the fuss was all about and why the Translation Unit failed to see that he was only trying to help.

The French phrases, including upper and lower cases, have been reproduced in extenso.

Despite claims by some that English is a global language (Crystal, 2003; Graddol, 1997, 2006), the French beg to differ (Durand, 2002).

The Governor General at the time was Sir William Deane. The SBS news-reader in question was Mary Kostakidis.

The French Ambassador at the time was His Excellency, Pierre Viaux. Also see Henley of the Guardian Unlimited, September 11, 2000 – http://www.guardian.co.uk/today/article/0,,367245,00.html, last accessed October 16, 2007.

South Africa's Josia Thugwane won the marathon at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, but could not be interviewed by the international media because he spoke neither English nor French. The ‘thrill of victory’ of this great Olympian shall for ever remain a mystery for the sporting world.

The late host of the American Broadcasting Corporation, James Kenneth McManus, better known by his professional name of Jim McKay, coined this expression.

The Chinese decision to block so-called ‘sensitive websites’ to the international press at the Beijing Games has dealt a serious blow to this idealistic perception of the Olympic Games.

Appendix 1: The French Programme – Sydney 2000 Games

The activities which are to initially form the Linguistic, Educational and Cultural components of the French Programme are set out below.

The sponsorship of translation interns (students) from the ESIT and the ISIT through the relevant French government agencies – based on a rotation of two students every 2 months to commence in June 1998.

The opportunity for a limited number of the translation interns to return to Sydney at the time of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games on terms to be agreed. SOCOG could pay those translators at the professional rate applicable.

SOCOG will develop and maintain a French component of its website dedicated to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. SOCOG will also examine the possibility of making the website bilingual in English and French.

SOCOG and INSEP will work together for the development of a bilingual (English/French) Lexicon of Olympic Sports. SOCOG will further develop the lexicon produced by INSEP for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games into an integrated computer-based French/English/French lexicon to include sporting and Olympic Terminology. This database will then be made available to relevant French Government Agencies, the IOC, IFs and future organising committees.

INSEP will work with SOCOG on the production of a book version of the lexicon – based on the terminology developed in point 4 (above). The book will be published jointly by SOCOG and INSEP in May/June 2000 and distributed to relevant members of the Olympic Movement. SOCOG will also seek to develop the lexicon in a CD-ROM format.

Provision of a French language training programme for SOCOG staff facilitated through the Alliance Française de Sydney. SOCOG recognises that such an initiative will contribute to the profile of the French language within the Organising Committee.

The provision for selected SOCOG staff to participate in the intensive French language course, ‘Français, langue du sport’, in Bordeaux, at the Université Michel de Montaigne in July and September in 1998, 1999 and 2000.

The Alliance Française de Sydney has approximately 3000 students, and it is anticipated that they will provide a ready pool of potential Language Specialists. SOCOG proposes to develop its working relationship with Alliance Française de Sydney, which will have a number of benefits. These include: (a) encouraging the development of the language skills of members of the Alliance; (b) familiarising them with the Olympic Movement in preparation for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games; and (c) encouraging membership of Alliance Française de Sydney.

The support for the publication and distribution of a bilingual school education kit – in French for Australian schools and in English for French schools.

A cultural component relating to three of the four Olympic Arts Festivals: A Sea Change (1998), Reaching the World (1999) and Harbour of Life (2000). The extent and nature of support to these festivals will be agreed upon by both parties.