Presse française American press
We're talking
MIIS team serves as language experts
By AMY WU
awu@montereyherald.com
Monterey Institute of International Studies graduates are famous for heading off to the CIA, FBI and foreign service, but few people might guess that the school is also a key training ground for the Olympics.
No, there are no Michelle Kwans, Sarah Hugheses, Apolo Ohnos, skiing greats or curling champs emerging from MIIS, but the school has churned out a core staple of Olympic translators and interpreters for the past three decades.
Salt Lake 2002 continues that tradition: This year at least a dozen MIIS academics and alumni will serve as the language experts for the 19th Winter Olympic Games that open tonight.
Bill Weber, the brainchild behind the MIIS-Olympics link, says that the connection made perfect sense.
"That is a coincidence, but the institute does have the only graduate school in the U.S. that trains translators and interpreters, so it would be quite normal that it would use MIIS graduates," Weber said.
In 1984, when Weber was dean of the school's Translation and Interpretation Department, he flagged the pool of MIIS talent to the officials of the International Olympic Committee.
"I wanted my students and young graduates to be part of the Olympics experience, so I said let's get some students involved in a big way," said the veteran translator, who has seven Olympics under his belt starting with the 1968 winter games in Grenoble, France.
The IOC thought that was a good idea, so that summer Weber led a group of 30 interpreters and 15 translators from MIIS to the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
This year, Weber returns to the Olympics as chief interpreter, and is joined by Daniel Glon, an MIIS professor, the chief translator for Salt Lake City and another Olympics veteran.
Glon moved his family to Salt Lake City two years ago to head the translation team, and has been commuting weekly to Monterey to teach at MIIS. He's a sports buff and said it's the thrill of being part of history that drew him to Utah. Since 2000, he's been plowing through thousands of documents required for such a large event. MIIS professor Yun-Hyang Lee is also in Salt Lake City.
Weber and the Olympics have a long history. The Olympics had been a longtime client of Weber's now California-based company, Language Services International. The 62-year-old was also chief interpreter at Calgary in 1988 and Atlanta in 1996.
To observers, the Olympics look glamorous, but Weber and his compatriots say translating and interpreting is just as grueling as acing a triple lutz. The Geneva-born language guru, who has worked for the United Nations, the Department of State and a handful of foreign ministries, says the Olympics is one of the toughest assignments to tackle.
"The meetings are like a mini-U.N. and there's also the emotional content. And many athletes don't speak very well; you have to guess what they say," said Weber. "Sometimes the way the athletes react is funny."
Interpreters need to be there for press conferences, interviews with athletes, meetings between officials - virtually everything. It is equally challenging for translators who need to translate all official documents from English to French, the official language of the Olympics.
"People think it's going to be about sports and coaches and athletes, but there's a lot of legal and medical stuff that needs to be translated," said Glon, who heads a staff of 15. Twenty-hour days are typical as the Games near. In addition, the translators have to work on the daily official newspaper, The Olympic Record, and the official Web site at www.saltlake2002.com.
That's why Weber's typical hires must have at least eight years of experience, and most of them already have the Olympics on their resume.
The same holds true with translation. Glon tested 160 applicants, but hired only 10.
Of course, it also helps if they are sports fans.
Glon, the native Frenchman who started translating at Munich in 1972, is a cycling buff who used to race competitively, and follows all of the cycling greats.
"If you don't care about sports, do something else," Glon said matter-of-factly. He founded the Association of International Linguists Olympics and Sports, a group of translators and interpreters who specialize in sports.
With the number of new sports and terms that surface every year, it's hard to keep up. That's why there's a meaty reference book for Weber's team of 30. Glon has been creating a reference book, crammed with a growing 10,000 entries that include technical terms for sports from bobsled racing to figure skating as well as medical lingo.
It is a special, if not exclusive, posse that translates and interprets. They remember precise moments at press conferences and interviews. They rattle off their favorite athletes for whom they've interpreted.
They come because this is the Olympics, after all.
In Salt Lake, the interpreters are the voice of the Olympics. Weber's staff speaks nine languages, including French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Arabic. In addition, there are 450 volunteers who serve as backup for more obscure languages such as Czech, Bulgarian, Romanian and Polish.
It's hard finding good people, Weber says. Although his company LSE has a roster of more than 350 freelance interpreters, it takes a special kind of person to work at the Olympics. Olympics isn't just sports, it's politics, it's drama and it's as unpredictable as the competition itself.
And lest observers think that the Olympics is all parties and souvenir collecting, Weber assures it's extremely high pressure.
Atlanta 1996 stands out because of the bombing in the Olympic Park. The press conference was at dawn, and high security meant that transportation became a nightmare.
"Olympic traffic is pretty horrendous. Atlanta was a major nightmare. Some interpreters took almost three hours to get to their assignments," Weber recalled.
Salt Lake seems to be more sedate. For one, as Glon points out, this is the Winter Olympics, and has a mere 30 interpreters compared to the 140 interpreters at Sydney. The 2000 Summer Olympics Down Under were so busy that Weber manned an average of 22 venues a day. Salt Lake City will be a lot more mellow in comparison, with an average of 10 venues a day. This means a lighter load and less documents for Glon and his team.
Sept. 11 has also changed the landscape of this Olympics. Security has been tightened with the staff having to clear three or four security checks to get to the office.
While these folks are Olympic veterans, sometimes all the planning in the world doesn't help. Glon recalls an Olympics where the sound was so bad that none of the interpreters could understand what the winning athlete, a cyclist, was saying. The professor lucked out, though. As a cycling fanatic, he already knew plenty about the subject, so he interpreted as best he could.
"Since I knew the story of the guy, it was easier to recognize what he was saying," Glon said. Fellow interpreters followed his lead, and it turned out that he didn't do badly at all. "The next morning I flipped on the radio and heard the guy's speech and all I missed was the first name of his fiancee. It was luck."
……………..