Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Olympians of Translation Services

type='html'>
Olympians of Translation Services
With all the publicity surrounding the London Olympics, a lot has been spoken about the shortcomings of the organisers. Much of this has resulted from the failure of one aspect of security, quickly rectified by our ever-vigilant forces. It is a shame that our tabloid press and even our news channels have allocated so many resources to highlighting the failings, instead of praising the successes. There is much more to an Olympic games than security and efforts to accommodate athletes and officials were appreciated by visiting teams who required in depth translation services.

En francais s'il vous plait
The official language of the Olympic Games is French because a Frenchman founded the modern Olympics. While the International Olympic Committee is not based in France, its location in Switzerland is also French speaking. English is also an official language of the 2012 games, but French will precede announcements when there are medals awarded to winners. The opening ceremony was also led with French announcements. Luckily, London already has a huge population of foreign visitors and the translation services that service this demand have worked hard to welcome visitors from more than two hundred countries for the Games.

Diversity was the Key Ingredient
London’s recipe for success when bidding for the Olympics in Singapore was based largely on the diverse population that resides therein. The Olympic bid delegation who represented Great Britain, spoke 28 different languages as a first language when they presented their pitch. This helped remove the illusion that people from the UK expect the rest of the world to speak English all of the time. Although this may be the case for many holidaymakers travelling to the Costas for their holidays, London’s multi-lingual population proved too much of a draw to be ignored.

Cashing in on New Languages
As with all business in the modern world, it is a lot easier to speak the language of your customers. I recently travelled with a taxi driver who informed me of the efforts made to help taxi drivers, converse with visitors. There has been a large initiative to get cab drivers to learn the basics of other languages and they were given CDs, which taught simple conversation skills. Anyone who could master the basics would be able to display flags denoting their multi-lingual abilities and cash in on the extra business during the London Olympics. With London such a multi-cultural city, the ability to use other languages, may be one legacy that cab drivers appreciate for years to come.


If you want to discover how translation services can help your business, visit www.world-translations.com/.

No comments:

Post a Comment