I recently had the pleasure of attending the webinar “Sports Integrity Terminology for Interpreters,” presented by Michelle Deeser and hosted by the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) as part of the organisation’s Continuing Professional Development series. This webinar took an in-depth look at terminology, challenges, and sports integrity.

Michelle Deeser is a sports interpreter who interprets between English and Chinese. In her presentation, which was geared towards translators and interpreters who either work in or are interested in working in sports, she used her previous experiences in Formula 1, snooker, tennis, and footfall (soccer).

Terminology

“Sports Integrity Terminology for Interpreters” started by defining sports integrity: adherence to honesty, fair play, and respect for sports rules. When athletes, coaches, and sports officials do not adhere to these concepts, such as through match-fixing, doping, and financial fraud, it is known as sports corruption.

Humanity has records of sports corruption back to the 1^st and 2^nd century BCE. Today, the sporting industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Betting alone in 2022 amounted to over $165 billion. As a result, sports corruption is a great temptation for those who stand to make a lot of money from throwing the results. Football, basketball, and tennis are the most targeted sports, but sports corruption can be found in any sport.

As you may have guessed from the title “Sports Integrity Terminology for Interpreters”, Michelle focused on terminology, especially terminological databases (termbase) and key terms in sports. For example, discussing the different types of tournaments, such as knockout tournaments where losers are eliminated until there is one winner (e.g. typical in tennis Grand slams), round robin tournaments where all competitors in a group play each other (e.g. Football Leagues and multi-stage competitions), wildcard entries (specific invites to athletes to compete), and byes (automatic advancement to the next round without competing, e.g. top individuals or teams).

As part of sports integrity, terminology about doping and anti-doping agencies is also essential for interpreters and translators. Key organisations such as the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and related terminology like the Doping Control Officer (DCO) should be part of any preparations as well as termbases. Cheating terminology, such as doping, blood doping, and boosting (intentionally injuring oneself to trigger the body’s red blood cell production) as well as terminology on advanced monitoring techniques (biological passports, which are records containing an athlete’s biomarker over time, and therapeutic use exemptions, for those with medical conditions that require banned substances) were also discussed, as well as how interpreters might encounter these terms in interviews, hearings, or educational campaigns, highlighting the need for precision in conveying technical and legal concepts.

Terminology in specific situations

Next, Michelle shifted context to investigations of sports integrity violations and terms that are useful, such as the difference between an athlete (competitors across all sports) and players (specific games such as football or tennis), investigators (responsibility for looking into allegations of corruption), match officials (any and all referees, match commissioners, and safety personnel), governing bodies (national and international ones), and the Court of  Arbitration for Sport (CAS, think the Supreme Court of sports). As many of these positions may have little or no formal training in sports corruption, it can make it difficult for translators and interpreters when wrong or colloquial terms are used instead of officially recognised ones.

Another large area that Michelle covered was match-fixing and betting terminology, defining match fixing (manipulating the overall outcome), spot fixing (targeting specific events within a match), bookmaker (manages bets, calculates odds), match alert (triggered by suspicious activity), inside information and more. Such as with the last group of terms, Michelle explained that interpreting in these scenarios often involves translating highly technical terms alongside conversational exchanges during interviews or hearings.

Finally Michelle focused on creating glossaries for sports integrity assignments, including structure and sources. Michelle uses Excel to make and then sort her terms alphabetically. These include the term with additional columns for English terms, definitions and Chinese terms (her working language). She uses reliable glossaries, official documents and research reports in English and Chinese, often from sports governing bodies or reliable independent sports institutions for her term research. A lot of this is also done proactively before receiving assignments to make the preparations easier in the future.

Michelle also provided a comprehensive list of sources for further research, including online classes, books, reports, podcasts, and documentaries from sports experts.

Resources and conclusions

Michelle finally discussed how to become an interpreter for sports integrity. To start, she recommends undergoing legal interpreting training (e.g., the Diploma in Public Services Interpreting in the UK). Understanding police procedures and legal frameworks is important, especially in cases where corruption is highly suspected and legal proceedings will be involved.

She also recommended actively pursuing opportunities by contacting agencies, showing an interest in sports-related assignments, and building a network with other sports professionals.

In the last couple of minutes, the presentation ended with the outlook for sports interpreters, which is always increasing as the sports field is also growing – and it is likely to be mostly resistant to advances in AI.

My Thoughts on “Sports Integrity Terminology for Interpreters”

I am not an interpreter, and while I have done some interpreting in the past, it is not for me. However, it is always useful to gain insights into parallel professions. I do not do legal or sports translations, but many of the things Michelle said are exactly what I do as a translator, such as terminology research, being familiar with existing structures and organisations, and doing proactive terminology research.

In a time when AI is also encroaching on the work that human translators and interpreters do, it was engaging to hear that Michelle thought sports interpreting would resist advances in AI. I think a lot of this was due to the legal nature of some of the contexts, such as investigations into sports integrity and sports corruption. AI is a good tool, but any tool that may make a mistake should not be used in anything legally significant. I also believe the same for scientific and medical significance, but I digress.

I must admit that I did not think I would learn much from this presentation. While that may be true in the sense of practical information that will directly affect how I work, it was nice to hear that others have similar working processes.