Next year, athletes from every sport from every corner of the world will reunite in London to participate in one of the most anticipated event of the year. Swimmers, basketballers, boxers, tennismen and many others are going to meet at the 2012 Olympics Games in the British Capital to compete against each other in their respective disciplines in the hope of getting the “so – desired” gold medal. I can predict that 2012 is going to be a very electric year!

But the real star of the show is going to be William Shakespeare… Surprised? I was too when I discovered that the 38 plays he produced are all going to be performed in a different language to mark the 2012 London Olympics. From Italian to Lithuanian, Stagings of Julius Caesar to King Lear, sport to theatre, there is just one step. For all the Shakespeare’s lovers out there, the six-week theatre season (part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad) will start on 23 April at the Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, so don’t be late…

According to Dominic Dromgoole, the Globe’s artistic director, this season is the perfect opportunity to gather everybody around the same passion:

“It has long been recognised that Shakespeare, as well as a great playwright, has become an international language. We want to celebrate this international affection by welcoming Shakespeare enthusiasts – producers, performers and audiences – to experience his work in their own languages and dialects.”

Will you be one of them?

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Shakespeare at the 2012 Olympics

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Golf is a terrific sport and great way to meet interesting people. To help you get out there and start playing I’ve prepared a quick A to Z of some of the language you’ll hear on the course.

Action: Backspin on ball causing it to stop dead or spin backwards.

Albatross: 3 under par on one hole.

Approach shot: Hitting the ball to the green.

Birdie: 1 under par on one hole.

Bogey: 1 over par on one hole.

Divot:    The piece of turf that flies out when a shot is hit on the fairway.

Dogleg:  A hole where the fairway turns to the right of left.

Double Bogey: 2 over par on one hole.

Draw: The draw is similar to the fade with the ball being given a deliberate right to left spin and is considered to be a controlled and deliberate shot. Often adds yards onto the shot as the ball tends to roll further when it hits the ground following a draw.

Eagle: 2 under par on one hole.

Fade: Similar to the slice but with less movement of the club head across the ball and thus less spin. This can be a very useful shot to avoid obstacles or cope with windy conditions and is often played deliberately by experienced golfers.

Fat: When you hit the ground before the ball reducing distance.

Fore!:  Shouted immediately following a bad shout which is heading towards another person.

Fried Egg: When a ball remains in its own pitch mark after landing in the bunker.

Gimme: Applies to a shot that the other players agree can count automatically. Traditionally shorter than a jeroboam in friendly matches or your putter grip on not so friendly matches.

Lawrence of Arabia: Nickname a golfer earns when they’ve been in the sand all day.

Slice: Produced by failing to hit the ball square and thus putting some side spin onto it. Most often right handed golfers tend to strike the ball with the club head moving from right to left causing the ball to spin sideways and fly off to the right mid-flight.

Hacker: A poor golfer.

Handicap: Allows players of mixed ability to play against one competitively. Your handicap is the number of strokes it takes you over 18 holes plus par.

Hole In One : When the ball goes straight into the hole from your tee shot. I had one of these on the 17^th July 1997.

Hook: The hook is simply the opposite of the slice and would occur when a right handed golfer hits the ball with the club head travelling across the ball from left to right. Causes the ball to ‘hook’ off to the left (often into the trees, often followed by swears).

Nineteenth hole: The bar.

Par:  Level par on one hole.

Pin: The flag.

Pitch Mark: The indentation mark the ball leaves on the green. You repair your pitch mark with a pitch mark repairer.

Pull: The pull shot is similar to the push shot but this time the path is to the left of the desired target.

Push: The push shot simply describes a shot which travels in a straight line, but a line which is to the right of the intended target.

Range: The place where you practice.

Rough: Grass which has been left to grow at the side of the fairway.

Shank: Striking the ball with the housel of the club causes a shank. Horrible feeling which once happened in a round has the tendency to come back.

Stableford: A scoring system which allocates points to scores (highest score wins). 2+ par=0 points, 1+ par=1 point, par= 2 points, -1 par=3 points, -2 par=4 points, -3 par=5 points and so on.

Stiff. The perfect shot – bang on the pin.

Tee: A small peg stuck into the ground on which a golf ball is placed. Also area where golfers play first stroke of any given hole.

Top: Hitting the ball half way up so it doesn’t rise into the air. runs along the ground. Some golfers refer to this shot as a ‘worm burner’, ‘sally gunnel’, ‘worker’, ‘bounder’, finger stinger’.

Triple Bogey: 3 over par on one hole.

Yips (the): Missing simple puts because of nerves.

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | The Language of Golf

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In 2008, the Ladies Professional Golf Association proposed penalties for players who were unable or unwilling to speak English on tour.  The proposal was not well-received, to put it mildly, and the resulting furor eventually led Commissioner Carolyn Bivens to resign.

The idea came about largely because players from South Korea were so reluctant to speak English. As it turns out, they were simply embarrassed and self-conscious about their English skills, especially after one of the South Korean women was called out in a Canadian newspaper for calling Sponge Bob Squarepants “Spongie Bob.”

Now, according to the New York Times, the LPGA has taken a different approach, offering players the option of gaining foreign language skills via a partnership with a company called Language Training Center. Company representatives accompany the players on tour and offer one-on-one coaching.

The courses have become quite popular. Some players take them to build up and fine-tune their English skills, while English-speaking players study other languages. The lessons go beyond just vocabulary to include information about cultural expectations, like how to receive gifts and how to sign autographs, information that is helpful to players as they become international stars.

Even though they must pay for them out of pocket, the lessons are a boon to players like Ai Miyazato, currently the highest-ranked player. Miyazato is actually quite proficient in English, but under the glare of the spotlight, she freezes up, and often by the end of a press appearance she has reverted back to her native Japanese. She told the New York Times:

“I feel like my English is still not enough. I want the people to get to know me a little, but I get nervous.”

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Ladies Professional Golf Association Helps Players Learn New Languages

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In 2011 the senior rugby teams of Olney RFC are undertaking a tour to Argentina. I am a fan of watching rugby and we have been given the opportunity to support them.

During the tour the club members will be undertaking a number of rugby workshops at local schools and orphanages as well as playing competitive rugby. K International has donated a sum which will go towards the equipment for the township schools.

Oliver Brackenbury the 1^st Team Vice captain of Olney Rugby Club had the following to say:

“We have carried out two similar tour in recent years to both South Africa and the Philippines, where we have provided not only training at the schools and orphanages but also left them with a mountain of rugby kit to allow them to continue to enjoy the game long after we had left.  As a qualified and accredited RFU coach the chance to train with these children, who often come from backgrounds of extreme poverty and hardship, is one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I can assure you that this is always very rewarding for both the players and the children, and this allows us to forge a closer relationship with the companies in and around our area”

This experience has helped us to learn some really interesting facts regarding the many languages that are spoken within the country of Argentina which I would like to share with you readers:

The spoken languages of Argentina number at least to 40 although Spanish is dominant. Others include native and other immigrant languages; two languages are extinct and others are endangered, spoken by elderly people whose descendants do not speak the languages.

Argentina is predominantly a Spanish speaking country with 39.8 million speakers, the fifth largest after Mexico, United States, Spain, and Colombia. Based on the 2001 census and 2006 population figures, there may be as many as 40 million Spanish language speakers.

Argentines are amongst the few Spanish-speaking countries (like El Salvador and Honduras) that almost universally use what is known as voseo the use of the pronoun vos instead of tú (the familiar “you”). The most prevalent dialect is Rioplatense, whose speakers are located primarily in the basin of the Río de la Plata.

Keep posted for our next blog regarding their progress in Argentina…

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Olney Rugby Club in Argentina

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As London prepares to host the 2012 Summer Olympics, even cabbies are getting in on the act. In order to better communicate with foreign visitors, around 3,000 cabdrivers working for Radio Taxi are taking CD and MP3-based courses in  French, Spanish and Chinese.

In an article on the BBC, Radio Taxi CEO Geoffrey Riesel explained the purpose of the program:

“In 2012 we expect to see an extra 10 million people in London…We are attempting to ensure many more of our drivers can pick up some of the basic phrases of a number of languages.”

However, lest the Olympic attendees be deprived of the wit and wisdom of London cabbies, the lessons go a step beyond basic phrases. According to The Australian,  while the lessons are not designed to make the cabbies fluent in the various languages, they are designed to allow them to go beyond transactional phrases and engage in some light, playful banter with their clients. Sample course phrases include: “I had that Michael Caine in the back of my cab last week” and “It’s political correctness gone mad.” For each language they learn, the drivers will receive a flag to put on their vehicle, advertising their linguistic proficiency to potential customers.

Carlos Oliveira,a driver for Radio Taxi, told the Australian that he believes the language classes will be beneficial:

“The first people these foreigners are going to see are cab drivers, so if we can show them that we parlez a bit of their language then that’s got to be a good thing. To be able to say ‘welcome’ in Chinese would go a long way.”

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | London Cabbies to Take Language Lessons for 2012 Olympics

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The divide between French speakers and Dutch speakers in Belgium has grown increasingly intractable, and currently affects everything from how well the country’s government does (or does not) function to coaching schoolchildren at a soccer club.

According to the Associated Press, the KFC Strombeek soccer club of Grimbergen, Belgium has been officially banned from coaching children’s soccer in French. Apparently, when Dutch-speaking citizens of the town heard coaches were speaking French to some of the children (presumably, children who already spoke French), they organized a petition to ensure that future coaching sessions were conducted entirely in Dutch.

That might seem mean-spirited, but it’s symptomatic of a divide that extends throughout Belgian society. In fact, over 2 months after the last elections, Belgium’s government is at a standstill as French and Dutch factions of 7 political parties try to negotiate the next steps.  The party that won the elections, the New Flemish Alliance, wants to split the country in two.

The bulk of Belgium’s economic activity and prosperity is concentrated in the Dutch half of the country, leading many Dutch speakers to resent their French-speaking countrymen. But why take these tensions out on a soccer club?

That’s what Christian Donneux, the president of the soccer club, would like to know. He told the AP:

“We are a sports club, not a political party. Many of my patients here in Grimbergen are Francophones. Am I supposed to send them away?”

Meanwhile, Robert Timmermans, the man who organized the petition against the soccer club, watched a group of French-speaking children at practice and declared:

“They must be coached in Dutch. This is our soccer field. (Dutch-speakers) paid for it. It is our tax money. Grimbergen is a Dutch-speaking town.”‘

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Belgium’s Language Divide Affects Everything From Government to Soccer Clubs

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If you are a football fan, you’ve no doubt been watching the World Cup this week, and a new word, vuvuzela, has entered your vocabulary.  A vuvuzela, also called a lepatata, is basically an incredibly loud horn that South African football fans use to annoy the other team during games.

For the uninitiated, here’s how various commentators have described the “music” produced by the vuvuzela (via Wikipedia): “annoying” and “satanic”…”a stampede of noisy elephants,” “a deafening swarm of locusts,” “a goat on the way to slaughter,” and “a giant hive full of very angry bees.”

So, why do South African football fans subject themselves and everyone around them to this auditory torture? And why is it called a vuvuzela, anyway?

As for the first question, the FIFA website has a quote from Sadaam Maake, one of South African football’s “celebrity followers,” explaining the appeal:

“Without the vuvuzela, I don’t think I would be able to enjoy football. It brings a special feeling to the stadiums. It is something that makes the fans want to get behind their team.”

Another football fan,Mzion Mofokeng, explains further:

“When we started the vuvuzela, there was so much sadness in our country in those years and it brought so much joy. All of a sudden people would go to the stadiums because of this instrument that was able to get fans on their feet and start cheering. For few hours, they would forget about the reality in our society and enjoy the sound.”

Per Wikipedia, Maake actually claims to have invented the vuvuzela himself in 1965, and has the pictures to prove it, although the current manufacturers say that the design was actually imported from America and Neil van Schalkwyk is listed as the inventor on the patent. The original instrument was made of aluminum and created from an old bicycle horn. The design was later modified to make the pipe longer, and plastic vuvuzelas have been mass-produced since 2001. The instrument may or may not have been modeled after ancient African kudu horn instruments.

Nobody is 100% sure how the horn came to be called a vuvuzela. Wikipedia says that it is believed to be derived from Zulu for “making a vuvu noise,” though it could also be derived from a slang word for shower (since it looks like a shower head.)

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | The Origin of the Vuvuzela

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The 2010 World Cup is set to take place in South Africa next month, from June 11th to July 11th. Teams from 32 different countries will travel to the country to compete for the championship. Of course, with the World Cup will come hordes of foreign football fans, all ready to party. Some of them will inevitably fall ill while in South Africa, perhaps as a result of too much of a good thing.

To prepare for them, South African pharmacy chain Clicks will use computers connected to Yahoo’s Babelfish, an online translation program. This should help break down the language barrier between pharmacists and their foreign customers. Customers will type in what’s ailing them, and Babelfish will translate their symptoms to the pharmacist and then translate the pharmacist’s recommendations back to the patient. Ideally, this process will ensure that patients are prescribed the correct medications and that they know how to use them.

In an article on the Times Live website, Jan Roos, head of Clicks pharmacy operations, explained why his chain decided to use online translation software:

“The biggest thing is to help our customers in their home language, and it is quite important that they understand how to use the drugs that they require.”

This will definitely be welcome news for people  traveling to South Africa who don’t speak any of the languages that are commonly spoken there (mainly Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans and English, although South Africa is such a diverse country that there are 7 other “official” languages).

Of course, machine translation is never perfect. Let’s just hope that Babelfish does a better job translating for the pharmacists than it did at translating my Spanish homework all those years ago…

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | South African Pharmacy Unleashes Translation Device for World Cup Fans

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The Olympics are supposed to be about mutual respect and harmony. However, the games that bring the world together are reigniting a long-simmering cultural feud in Canada. Canada is officially bilingual; French and English are both official languages. But, the Opening Ceremony left some French-speaking Canadians feeling slighted, according to this article on CTV.ca.

Although the opening of the Games was announced in French and then in English, the speech given by Games CEO John Furlong was almost entirely in his native tongue, English. Also, there was only one French-speaking performer in the line-up, which also included English and First Nations performers.

Complaints have been voiced by Canadian government officials including Quebec Premier Jean Charest, Heritage Minister James Moore, and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. The Official Languages Commissioner’s office has also begun an investigation.

Adele Mercier, a professor of philosophy specializing in language at Queen’s University, told CTV.ca that:

“I think the problem is that the French were treated . . . as just another subculture that Canada has, that we are all happily tolerating. This is irksome for official and historical reasons…It strikes a chord among French Canada because French Canadians have a historical memory…the first colonists’ approach to French Canadians was to try to assimilate us and this was almost as good a representation of the fact that it has succeeded.”

Hopefully, the closing ceremony will be enough to make up for the opening ceremony for those who felt slighted. The Globe and Mail quotes executive producer David Atkins:

“The closing ceremony actually [has] a little more French in it, to be honest, and it was a creative choice we made right from the outset. I think that the critics of the amount of French content, hopefully, will find the closing a little more palatable.”

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Amount of French Content in the Olympics Ruffles Feathers in Canada

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Are you more likely to give money to someone who asks you for it in your native language? According to this article from The Sun, beggars and street performers in New Delhi are becoming multilingual, hoping to increase their haul from foreign tourists during the Commonwealth Games next year. Although most of the tourists expected for the games will probably speak English, beggars are adding languages like French and Spanish to their repertoire as well.

Many of the beggars are children who were born into families of beggars. Although most of these children will never receive formal schooling, the beggars of New Delhi have set up “language schools” of their own.

Classes usually take place at night, and consist of learning helpful phrases in other languages, such as “I am an orphan.” Beggars are also trained to recognize foreign currency and determine its value.

Begging is actually an organized occupation in New Delhi, with an estimated 100,000 beggars in the city. Beggars are assigned specific places and times to beg, and move around so that no one beggar is in the same place for too long.

The entire enterprise of begging is targeted to achieve the maximum amount of profit possible. Why learn to beg in more than one language? According to a beggar quoted in the Sun article, it adds a “personal touch” to begging. As businesses are learning the world over, it pays to speak to your customer in his or her native language!

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Indian Beggars Become Multilingual

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