Thanks For Comprehending! Thanks For Comprehending! / Broadcasters Covering The Winter Olympics Find That English Speakers Finish Last
Tuesday, February 10 1998
Published on AllBusiness.com
The middle of his first night in the Olympic Village, Alex Wilson awoke to the call of nature. Half-asleep, he fumbled for the light switch in the bathroom but tripped an alarm instead.
"I pushed it by accident!" Wilson, an American skier, yelled into the emergency phone. But the Japanese-speaking security guards in Nagano were nonplussed.
"The only word they understood was accident," Liz McIntyre, one of Wilson's amused teammates, recalled later.
Athletes aren't the only ones running into the language barrier at the Winter Olympic Games, which continue in Nagano until the end of this month. American broadcasters who took English for granted while covering the Atlanta Games in 1996 have discovered a vastly different playing field this time around.
Many residents of Nagano, a provincial city about 120 miles from Tokyo, speak only a smattering of English. Local volunteers have been taking foreign-language lessons to prepare for the Olympics, but getting a taxi or buying a souvenir is still an adventure.
Guests at the Nagano First Hotel find wrapped razors bearing the greeting, "Have a good shaving for your fresh life." And a news release from the Japanese Olympic Committee helpfully advised reporters: "Today's training hour of the Japanese bobsleigh team may be differed. It was mentioned to be held at p.m. 4:30-5:30, but this schedule is not settled yet. We ask you for your comprehension."
Major press conferences are usually translated into several languages and many venues have multilingual staff members. Journalists often sidestep the language issue by tailing athletes from their own countries.
But visitors can forget about heading back to their hotels and catching up on other Olympic events. Aside from the closed-circuit CBS feed at the main press center, the coverage is being broadcast only in Japanese. Public broadcaster Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) and the country's five major private terrestrial networks -- which formed a consortium to purchase the broadcast rights for $37.5 million -- decided against producing bilingual programming.
"If we were to use interpreters, they wouldn't be able to keep up with the speed of some sports, such as hockey, in which a one-second delay would be fatal for game commentary," explained Yosuke Fujiwara, the chief operating officer of the Japan Consortium.
"If there were good English commentators for top-level ice hockey games, they wouldn't be in Japan, they would be working for CBC in Canada," he added wryly.
Meanwhile, English-speaking visitors have been getting payback by mangling Japanese grammar.
"The workers
"I pushed it by accident!" Wilson, an American skier, yelled into the emergency phone. But the Japanese-speaking security guards in Nagano were nonplussed.
"The only word they understood was accident," Liz McIntyre, one of Wilson's amused teammates, recalled later.
Athletes aren't the only ones running into the language barrier at the Winter Olympic Games, which continue in Nagano until the end of this month. American broadcasters who took English for granted while covering the Atlanta Games in 1996 have discovered a vastly different playing field this time around.
Many residents of Nagano, a provincial city about 120 miles from Tokyo, speak only a smattering of English. Local volunteers have been taking foreign-language lessons to prepare for the Olympics, but getting a taxi or buying a souvenir is still an adventure.
Guests at the Nagano First Hotel find wrapped razors bearing the greeting, "Have a good shaving for your fresh life." And a news release from the Japanese Olympic Committee helpfully advised reporters: "Today's training hour of the Japanese bobsleigh team may be differed. It was mentioned to be held at p.m. 4:30-5:30, but this schedule is not settled yet. We ask you for your comprehension."
Major press conferences are usually translated into several languages and many venues have multilingual staff members. Journalists often sidestep the language issue by tailing athletes from their own countries.
But visitors can forget about heading back to their hotels and catching up on other Olympic events. Aside from the closed-circuit CBS feed at the main press center, the coverage is being broadcast only in Japanese. Public broadcaster Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) and the country's five major private terrestrial networks -- which formed a consortium to purchase the broadcast rights for $37.5 million -- decided against producing bilingual programming.
"If we were to use interpreters, they wouldn't be able to keep up with the speed of some sports, such as hockey, in which a one-second delay would be fatal for game commentary," explained Yosuke Fujiwara, the chief operating officer of the Japan Consortium.
"If there were good English commentators for top-level ice hockey games, they wouldn't be in Japan, they would be working for CBC in Canada," he added wryly.
Meanwhile, English-speaking visitors have been getting payback by mangling Japanese grammar.
"The workers
