No English? No golf. No joke.

Article Details

Global Watchtower

Common Sense Advisory Blogs

Posted by Renato S. Beninatto on September 2, 2008 in the following blogs: Translation and Localization, Interpreting, Business Globalization, Best Practices
Pages \| \|

It sounds like a joke, but it isn't. Last week, the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) announced that it would make it mandatory for players to speak English.

The initiative appears to be aimed at 45 South Korean players -- eight of whom rank among the association's 20 top earners. The women were told the policy will require current players to pass an oral test of their English-speaking skills or face suspension from the tour. Sponsors and journalists following the sport are unhappy that the South Koreans are winning several tournaments, but they are unable to give those "enlightening" interviews that winners of this action-packed sport are supposed to at the end of a tournament.

The LPGA has 121 players from 26 countries on tour, but the South Koreans are the only ones being targeted. For people used to following more international sports like soccer and Formula 1, the answer would be much simpler: The LPGA should hire professional interpreters to do simultaneous interpreting for these players for a few hundred dollars per event. If you want to keep the example closer to home, look at Major League Baseball. Japanese players have dedicated interpreters to help them before, during, and after their games, as we pointed out in our previous posting Fair or Not, Japanese Players Have Interpreters and Most Latinos Don't.

The LPGA public relations blunder is a good conversation starter about several biases in the coverage of sports in America, like the fact that American media changed the medal counts at the Olympics so that the U.S. always appeared on top. But ultimately this is an opportunity for the language industry to reconcile the globalization of sports with the reality of business by stepping up with creative solutions.

Categories