Games talk
Language planning for Sydney 2000 – a legacy to the Olympic movement

Joseph Lo Bianco

This book documents the process and outcomes of organising the Language Service Program for the Sydney Olympic and Paralympic Games as well as the intensive preparations, strategic thinking and planning required.  The major areas of responsibility for the Service included providing interpretation for all conferences and congresses for the Olympic family both at pre-Games and Games times (e.g. all International Olympic Committee and Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games functions); providing conference interpretation for press conferences at the main press centre and venue press centres, and providing translation of official publications, guides, reports and ancillary correspondence. The report documents the provision of the services and numerous others, and includes details of the volunteer linguists involved; what languages were spoken at the Games; the structure of the Language Service Program and case studies of some of the volunteers involved.

Contents

A legacy that Lives On
The Olympic truce and the Olympic ideal | The ancient games | Revival: the Olympic games are reborn

Australia and the Olympic Games
The Melbourne Olympics

Communicating in the Olympics
Barcelona | Seoul | Atlanta

Sydney
Organisation | Languages service | Operational areas covered | Planning assumptions: official languages and Sydney's demography | General services | Clients | Level of interpretation services | Language specialists | Translation | Multilingual switchboard | Professional interpreters | Service priorities | Pre-games events: field testing the language plans

Ready, set...

Appendices
Organisational chart of the language service | Publications and translation unit | The volunteer linguists | Who speaks what | The French program | Participants in the Sydney 2000 language planning consortium

2007 | 62pp | ISBN-13: 978-1-904243-71-7 | ISBN-10: 1-904243-71-1 | £15 | Order this title online

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