As far as event planning goes, it doesn’t get much bigger than the Olympic Games.
It takes decades of planning, infrastructural and venue construction, and hefty local budgeting – over $14 billion for the recent London 2012 games – to make each edition of the Olympiad a reality. In both the decades of planning that precede each Olympic Games as well as during the actual event, translators and interpreters play a vital role in securing the cultural and economic success of the Games.
One of the most crucial challenges for an Olympic host city is the ability to cope with the massive influx of foreign tourists for the duration of the games, especially considering that the majority of visitors will be non-native language speakers. For the city of London, this influx was estimated to bring in approximately $25 billion in economic activity, but that estimate would have remained a mere potential if the personnel staffing the Olympic, transportation, and service facilities in and around the immediate Olympic zone would have had no way to effectively communicate with the arriving tourists, media representatives, delegates, and athletes. In order to cultivate the inviting international atmosphere each Olympic host city strived for and to maximize the economic potential of the games, organizers must therefore be able to provide superb language services in the forms of tour guides, interpreters, multi-language publications, signs, and even announcements.
While hosts have become more successful in their efforts to provide seamless communication between all parties involved, even the London games had their incidents of communication breakdown. Last year, for example, several instances of incorrectly spelled Arabic signs as well as mistranslated, computer-generated documents angered representatives from the Middle East.
There was also the story of a gymnast from Uzbekistan who was unable to answer the questions of English reporters because no interpreter was to be found. Ironically, one of the reasons why London was chosen to host the 2012 Olympic Games was its reputation as a multicultural metropolis – home to over 50 ethnic groups who speak more than 300 different languages.
Despite these linguistic glitches, London has proven that modern Olympic Games can, in addition to being successful as a sporting event, also be a commercial and logistical triumph. But that doesn’t mean that there would be no room for improvement. Organizers know about the importance of expert translation and interpretation services for the success of each of Olympiad. Therefore, the
Sochi 2014 Organization Committee has organized and international translation forum entitled “Sochi 2014: Translating the Games” that will not only review the achievements of the last organizers but also aims to develop new ways of improving the collaboration between language service providers and organizers.
EVS Translations welcomes the initiative and hope that the first translation forum of its kind in the history of the Olympic movement will result in Olympic Games that are marked by both athletic and linguistic excellence.
