On the question of food at the Aviva Open, for the convenience of badminton fans who watched at the SIS, they expected a greater variety of food and more tables and chairs at the venue itself, although food can be brought back to the seats for consumption. If fans are willingly to move away from the SIS venue, an abundant source of food outlets are available nearby: the Old Airport Road food center, the Suntec City for more expensive restaurant-type food or slighly cheaper buffet-type outlets, the Lau Pa Sat which offers a great variety at very reasonable prices and where our BC friends converged the last time for our meals, etc. The only problem is transport if one doesn't drive to the venue as there are limited buses operating there. However, this will soon be solved when the Cirle Line (for trains) is linked to Kallang where SIS is situated.
Have any of you ever worked on a big tournament? It looks as if I'm going to spend the whole Korea Open sitting at the microphone. I just hope the microphone is set up in view of all the courts. At least I won't have to worry about losing my seat every time I get up to get a cold drink. If any of you have any pronunciation tips for players' names, feel free to pass them along. I know I have the English, French, Indonesian, and Korean ones covered but the Chinese and Thai names are going to be interesting. From a different standpoint, I now have an excuse to speak to each and every top badminton player, if only to ask for help in not butchering their names over the PA system.
What will you be doing, specifically??.. hmm, are you going to be at the tournament's desk, doing general PA, announcing the players' name as they march toward the court area?? or as a reporter?? or other position??.. personally, i've had a similar experience last yr at the World's, but simply as a translator but fortunately didn't have to pronounce other players' names(ie. Thai, European name etc.)..hehe anyways, enjoy the gig in the upcoming tourney..and hope you'll share some pics with the players with the rest of us..
Yes, apparently I'll be announcing the matchups for court no. such-and-such and so on. I expected to be asked to translate. Most of the important information would originate in Korean and need translating into English and beyond. I expect a lot of the interpretation that goes on here requires 2 translations: Korean-English then English-[players'/coaches' native tongue]. I'm sure they can come up with translators directly for jumps like Korean-Chinese and Korean-Japanese and of course a lot of players and coaches will speak English but I doubt they will find a lot of translators who can interpret directly between Korean and Thai or German or Bahasa Indonesia or Vietnamese. Of course the Danes, Dutch, and Filipinos and even the Americans will all speak English but there must be a lot who don't speak English and whose mother tongue is not widely studied in Korea. Anyway, they decided to give me a task wherein my lack of complete fluency in Korean won't be a hindrance. Did you interpret for the Indonesians, then? That wasn't you translating between Charmaine Reid and Candra and Sigit at the medal ceremony, then, was it? If so, then "simply as a translator" is being rather modest. That was the kind of thing I was afraid of when they asked me about announcing. I didn't want to have to translate what a foreign player said back into Korean for an entire stadium full of Korean brows furled in incomprehension.
I see...so i assume you'll probably be translating from Korean-English and vice versa only, correct??..Or you'll be translating other languages(ie. Chinese, Thai, French) into Korean and vice versa also??..Hmm, if that's the case, then i think you'll do fine...pardon for not fully comprehending what you just wrote.. uuuuhh, yah, that was me helping out Ms. Reid (well, at least if you are referring to the QF and SF days. Another person did the interview for me on the Finals day, i believe when Taufik and Nova/Lilyana won the championships)...Well, most of my translating "work" were done "behind the scene"(after the matches had ended, even on the prelims days). Esp. on the Semifinals and Finals days, where they were interviewing the players on top of a mini stage... As for you doing the TV translation, well i was also a bit caught off guard when they asked and then told me i will be doing the translation live on tv which will be broadcasted around the world(you don't know how surprised i was)..I almost declined it, but then they kinda insist me to "try it"(cos they tried the previous night talking to Sigit and Candra and they weren't too satisfied), so i said ok..Don't worry nervousness will be there but just take a deep & long breath and relax..Plus I don't think you'll be translating an Indonesian player back to Korean and vice versa, correct??..
Actually, I don't think I'll even end up doing any translating. Just announcements in English. They asked me to do that instead even though I had volunteered to do interpretation, which I was pretty confident with unless it would involve real-time translating for interviews or any other task where the translation back into Korean were of primary importance. I figured that if I were interpreting between Korean organizers and coaches or players who spoke English, most of the important information would be given to me in Korean and I'd just have to make sure it got rendered properly for the foreign teams but that rendering would be in my mother tongue, English. Going the other way, the information that would need to pass from visiting teams to local organizers wouldn't require as much tact or formality. Anyway, all of that is moot because I'm basically just going to be reading stuff and asking people to disable the flashes on their cameras and stuff like that. The only remotely linguistic endeavour will be my attempts to refrain from butchering names. I guess I didn't see you, then. I only saw Charmaine Reid doing the interviews on Finals Day. We had coverage for several days on Star Sports but I don't have Star Sports and I didn't get around to having a friend tape from his TV until finals day. I didn't see interviews on CCTV or GDTV that week. I can imagine you must have been nervous. Which one is your native tongue? What weren't they satisfied with? Did Sigit and Candra try being interviewed in English? I thought they interviewed Sigit and Candra as the runners-up after the Men's doubles final, too. Maybe I am thinking of the interviews with Lilyana, Nova, and Taufik. I don't know why I suspected the announcing task would be combined with real-time translation. The TV coverage here will only be in Korean and I don't actually remember any interviews for everyone in the stadium at past Korea Opens. I guess I was thinking of those TV interviews at the WC because they were broadcast over the PA system for everyone in the Anaheim stadium. They won't likely do that here, though, and if they do, they'll get a Korean to translate because the most important thing will be telling the spectators in Korean what the players said in English or another language.
Sounds pretty simple & fun, then... Yah, i only did the live tv translation on the QF and SF days(you can check last yr's World's threads in this forum and look for the QF and SF days threads; should be quite a bit of them).. Yes, my native tongue "now" is English. Eventhough i was raised and taught the Indonesian language. Fortunately i'm still fluent in Indonesian. The reason they said they wanted me to help translate was because they tried interviewing Candra & Sigit, in English, the previous night but for some reason they were having a hard time understanding what either of them were saying(i wasn't there to see the interview myself, so i can't judge which part they had trouble with)..poor Candra & Sigit though I believe the last time they interviewed Candra & Sigit was after they won their Semifinals match(and i was helping them). On Finals day, ESPN(Ms. Reid), only interviewed the winners.. ..well, if that's the case then they have to do an "extra" translation, for the local fans who can't really understand English..unlike the WC, where they just translate straight into English and vice versa..
So event, you now feel more comfortable about revealing a little of yourself. You know, I have been wondering for some time now that you are perhaps the only 'Korean' to have posted for such long periods in BF. I think not many native Koreans would like to communicate in English and for one who has been doing so in such good English, you are rare, that is if you are Korean. You revealed that your native tongue is English, so you can't be Korean. You must be a foreigner (American ?) who has lived in South Korea for quite a long time and are now quite well-versed with the Korean language and culture. You might even have a Korean wife (as one of my ex-American colleagues had) and now have many Korean friends who now want you to do some announcements in English and Korean for the Korea Open, something you feel quite happy and comfortable to do as you like badminton. If only they gave you the post of translator, then we may be able to see you in person on TV! Good Luck and enjoy yourself and remember to post may pics especially those that you'll definitely have a chance to take with the badminton stars. Then your record will be very difficult to beat!
I didn't realize I was being cryptic. I've mentioned before that I'm Canadian and that my native tongue is English but only when it was relevant so it's not too surprising that you haven't come across these instances in the subset of my posts that you happen to have read. I certainly didn't mention it in each of the 845 blurbs I posted. As for the announcing, the KBA put out a notice on their website so I responded to that directly. I know lots of people who play badminton here, of course, but they don't scour the badminton sites like I do. Nor does my wife. The last time I was asked to interpret, though, was by the chair of the local city badminton fed. He is a man I play with occasionally and our city was hosting a national amateur tournament to which amateurs had been invited from several Asian countries/SARs including Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and Japan. I doubt you'd see any translators on TV, though. Do you normally get coverage of the Korea Open where you are? I doubt CCTV or GDTV will show two events in a row so I'm guessing we'll only get the HK Open on PPLive. But if you do get it on TV, you might get lucky and hear my dulcet tones.
