SPORT AND TRANSLATION: INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE
Bristol, UK, 29th and 30th
May 2014
Our two day conference brought to a
close a year-long programme of events on Sport and Translation at the
University of Bristol. The interdisciplinary character of the conference drew together
scholars from various fields in the Humanities, giving a unique insight on how
sport is translated across cultures. We received international contributions
from Austria, Brazil, Denmark, Emirates, Italy, Spain and Turkey, and from our colleagues
elsewhere in Britain.
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| Photo: Erin Hawkey/Gloria Lanci |
We kicked off with the lecture of
Professor Gertrud Pfister (University of Coppenhagen), one of Europe’s leading
sociologists of sport. She took us on a delightful reflexion on how sport and translation have been intertwined throughout history, from the
meanings of sport in semiotics to the Western practices of physical educational
and its construction of rules and terminology.
Dr
David Goldblatt (University of Bristol and De Montfort University) was our
keynote speaker for the evening, which took place at Hamilton House in Stokes
Croft, a neighbourhood well known as a hub for art and music, with independent
shops and alternative cafes and bars. David provided an involving and engaging talk
based on his most recently published book Futebol
Nation: A Footballing History of Brazil.
The conference unfolded in five panels with 16 presentations that
discussed the practice of sport translation (practitioners, ethics and everyday
practices), its historical aspects and its social context.
The papers in
the first panel Translation and its Practitioners discussed the problems, challenges and strategies of
interpersonal and social communication in sports. Professor Eva Lavric
(University of Innsbruck) presented the results of a comprehensive research project
among multilingual football clubs in Austria, Germany and Italy; Dr Guzde
Begum Akuzum (University of Istanbul) analyzed the role of the sports
interpreter studying international sports events in Turkey and Helena Martin (Complutense de Madrid) looked
at the translation of sports ideologies through the use of the term “tiki-taka”
in describing Spanish football tactics.
In the second panel Sport and Translation and its
Ethics the presenters dealt with the contentious issues of
ethical and non-ethical practices in translation. Dr Christophe Declerc (University College
London) reflected on the use of machine translation as ‘doping’ or illegal
practice and Dr Kirsty Heimerl-Moggan (University of Central Lancashire) looked
at the work of qualified sports interpreters, linguists and sports reporters,
discussing their practices and their adherence to a code of ethics.
The third panel Sport and Translation and Everyday Practices brought a diverse array of
research and case studies. Dr Roger Baines (University of East Anglia) investigated the relationship between power and
translation in the work of interpreting for elite migrant footballers in UK. Dr Erika
Giogianni (University of Innsbruck) analysed the role of multilingualism and
multiculturalism in the success of European football teams. Elena Balcaite (University of
Gloucestershire) studied relations between spirituality and sports fan ship
among supporters of England’s national football team and Lithuania’s basketball
team. Ana
Suarez-Vidal (University of Bristol) with Dr Susana Ladra González
(Universidade Da Coruña) examined how translation is used in Twitter by sportsmen/women,
sports media and their followers.
The
fourth panel The History of Sport and Translation placed sport and
translation in its historical perspective. Dr Christian Schwartz (University of
Sao Paulo) investigated reports on football in the Argentinian 1920’s press as
narratives of the consolidation of a national language and football style. Dr David
Frier (University of Leeds) analysed the translation of ideologies in the
building of the Lisbon National Stadium in 1940s Portugal. Professor David Wood
(University of Sheffield) examined how language conveyed meanings in sports in Latin
American literature of the 1910s and 1920s. Dr Maurizio Viezzi (University of
Trieste) presented the challenges of translating and interpreting modern
history athletics lexicon.
The
fifth panel The Social Context of Sport and Translation approached
social interfaces between translation and sports. Dr Jehan Zitawi (University
of Abu Dhabi) examined the linguistic
and cultural challenges facing Arab sports translators and interpreters. Dr.
Francisco Meledandri (University of Bari) discussed how sports are translated using digital technologies, in particular online
social media among football fans. Dr Gloria Lanci and Dr Matthew
Brown (University of Bristol) reflected on
the politics of sports, and the significance of translations, in the origins of
football in Sao Paulo.
The
conference offered a great opportunity for networking in a new and rapidly
expanding field of cross-disciplinary research. We were very pleased to receive
our visitors to the University of Bristol and learn from their experiences. The
discussions over sport and translation continued beyond the conference room and
into our social reunions. Most of the participants established new links which
have continued to develop since the conference.
I am
grateful that I could take part of this conference, being part of the
organization team and as a presenter. I
think the most interesting aspect of the debates was to reflect on global
contemporary issues: how translation impacts the way we view international
sports events and understand international sports news; how sport could
constitute a ‘universal language’; how the understanding of foreign cultures
and societies are largely shaped by sport practices and through them are
translated and interpreted.
Taking place
just two weeks before the FIFA World Cup in Brazil it was inevitable that
football, among other sports, was at the centre of our informal talks! But this
only served to further enhance the friendly atmosphere that pervaded the event.
I found it particularly useful to be able to engage in those conversations with
academics just before the “biggest single-event sporting competition in the world” that, according to the FIFA website, would
“build a better future through a variety of ways”. We need to understand the
process of translation in order to comprehend the effects sporting events can
have on how we perceive our place in the world.
Dr. Gloria Lanci
This conference was
supported by the University of Bristol Research Strategy Fund, the School of
Modern Languages and the Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and
Arts (BIRTHA).
The organizing committee
was Matthew Brown, Jonah Bury, John Foot, David Goldblatt, Gloria Lanci, Mike
O’Mahony, Carol O’Sullivan, David Perkins, Arismende da Silva and Ana
Suárez-Vidal.
We are indebted to
Hannah Blackman for her peerless administrative support.
