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Football, fútbol, futbol, calcio II: terminology

In Part I of this series I discussed the expression the beautiful game used to refer to association football (which I will simply call football in the rest of this post). In this part I will look at the terminology mentioned by Joseph Lambert in his own blog post, The Terminology of the Beautiful Game.

The first half of the following table shows the terminology mentioned by Joseph Lambert in English, French and Italian, to which I have included the equivalents in Spanish and Catalan and English definitions.

Entries marked with an asterisk are not specific terms, but are ordinary words that could be used to describe the same situation.

The second half of the table contains additional interesting terms, and are discussed further below.

FrenchItalianSpanishCatalanEnglishDefinition
petit ponttunneltúneltúnelnutmegWhen the ball is played between the legs of an opposing player.
caviar*peach, *gemAn exceptionally good pass.
doppietadobletedobletbrace, double, pairTwo goals by the same player.
coup du chapeautriplettahat-trick, tripletehat-trick, triplethat-trickThree goals by the same player.
pokerpókerpòkerFour goals by the same player.
pokerissimo, manitamanitamaneta*score five, *thrashing, *thrash, *cricket score, *trounceFive goals, but not necessarily by the same player.
but [goal]golgolgolgoalIf you don't know what a goal is you probably won't be interested in this article!
cornercorner, calcio d'angolocórnercórnercornerDitto!
córner olímpicocórner olímpic*goal (straight/directly) from a corner, *score (straight/directly) from a cornerWhen the ball goes straight into the goal from a corner, without touching another player (except perhaps a small touch by a goalkeeper).
arbitrereferí, árbitroàrbitre/arefereeThe main official in charge of a match.
vuelta olímpicalap of honourWhen players walk around the edge of the pitch, celebrating in front of their fans.
cucchiaio, pallonettovaselinavaselinachipA short, high kick going over the head of an opposing player or over the arms of the opposing goalkeeper. Also used as a verb.
grand pont*autopase*autopase*beat, *go (a)roundWhen a player knocks the ball past an opponent on one side and runs around the other side of him or her.
lucarneescuadraescairetop cornerThe area just inside where the crossbar and post meet on the goalposts.
prolongationprórrogapròrrogaextra-timeAn additional 30 minutes of play in knockout matches when the scores are level at the end of ordinary time.
temps additionnelprolongación, descuento, tiempo añadidoprolongació, descompte, temps afegitinjury time, stoppage time, time added onAdditional time added by the referee to compensate for time lost due to injuries, substitutions or time-wasting.

Joseph’s article does not offer a translation of manita. I believe there is no specific term in English. We would either say that a team scored five or use an expression that refers to the fact that a team were well beaten, such as the verbs thrash or trounce. The expression cricket score is often used when a team is banging in the goals. A commentator might say ‘At one stage Arsenal looked like they might make it a cricket score‘. For those unfamiliar with cricket, this is an exaggeration. Even the lowest innings score ever in first-class cricket is 26, but normally a cricket score would be in excess of 150.

An interesting term in Spanish (and Catalan) is córner olímpico, literally an ‘Olympic corner’. In English we have no such term, so we’d just have to say that a player ‘scored straight from a corner’. According to Nicolás Alejandro Cunto’s blog, the term was coined when Argentina scored such a goal against Uruguay in 1924. The Uruguayan team had recently won the gold medal at the Olympic Games in Paris, where they celebrated with a lap of honour, which in Spanish was dubbed a vuelta olímpica – an Olympic lap or tour – a term still used in Spanish – and in Catalan – to this day.

The same article by Nicolás Alejandro Cunto illustrates the much higher proportion of words borrowed from English in Latin American Spanish than in Spanish Spanish. He uses referí (referee) rather than árbitro and wing (winger) rather than lateral.

Another curious Spanish term is vaselina, literally meaning ‘Vaseline’, to refer to what in English we call a chip. In English the word chip is often used as a verb rather than a noun, so ‘marcó con una vaselina’ might become ‘chipped the ball (over the goalkeeper’s head and) into the net’.

Joseph’s article mentions petit pont (small bridge), the French term for a nutmeg. French football parlance also has the grand pont (big bridge), which is when an attacking player knocks the ball past a defender on one side and then runs around the other side of the defender. (If you’re confused by this explanation, watch this exquisite ‘grand pont’ and goal by an 8-year-old called Adam, and if you’re not confused, watch it anyway!) There is no term as precise as this in English. Although a translator could describe the action precisely by explaining the manoeuvre in detail, this is a good example of where it is better to let some information become lost in translation in the interest of maintaining good style (e.g. ‘Ronaldo beat Johnson on the right flank before unleashing a cross to the far post…’).

French refers to the top corner as the lucarne (skylight); Spanish and Catalan use escuadra and escaire respectively, both meaning ‘right angle’. The closer the ball is to the junction between the crossbar and the upright, the more likely a French writer or commentator is to say en pleine lucarne (‘right in the top corner’, or ‘in the very top corner’).

Finally, translators working between French and Spanish or French and Catalan should watch out for a false friend when referring to extra time and injury time (see the table for other synonyms). Extra time is called la prolongation in French, but in Spanish and Catalan prolongación and prolongació mean injury time; extra time is called prórroga and pròrroga respectively.

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Football, fútbol, futbol, calcio I: the beautiful game

I recently stumbled upon an article by fellow specialist sports translator Joseph Lambert entitled The Terminology of the Beautiful Game. Joseph focuses on terminology in his source languages: French and Italian. My source languages are slightly different – I also translate from French, I don’t translate from Italian, and I translate from Spanish and Catalan – so with his permission I decided to write my own post incorporating his French and Italian terms and adding Spanish and Catalan terms.

I will examine the terms he discusses in a future article. In this post I will look at an expression used in the title of Joseph’s article. The term the beautiful game is instantly understood by English-speaking football fans – at least those in the UK and Ireland – as referring to association football, in the same way that boxing fans will instantly recognise the noble art as referring to their sport. Schott’s Sporting, Gaming & Idling Miscellany, by Ben Schott, lists three other poetic nicknames for sports: the sport of kings (horse racing), the gentle craft (angling), the noble science of defence (fencing) and the Tesserarian art (gambling).

The expression the beautiful game has no direct translation into French, Spanish and Catalan, so a translator working from English into these languages must either repeat the word football or use some other expression to refer to the sport. Spanish has the option of using the calqued translation balompié, which the Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas says “no ha gozado de mucha aceptación entre los hablantes y suele emplearse casi siempre por razones estilísticas, para evitar repeticiones en el discurso” (it is not widely used, and when it is it is nearly always for stylistic reasons to avoid repetition). French, meanwhile, can resort to the expression le ballon rond, which literally refers to the bag of air being booted around the field but is often used as a metonym to refer to the sport. French can also use the slightly informal shortened form foot (French can also remove the suffix -ball from the names of two other sports: handball and basketball).

Another alternative in English is soccer, a word that derives from association football (see next paragraph). I remember soccer being in widespread use when I was growing up as a child in England, but in recent times – perhaps particularly since the 1994 World Cup in the USA – it seems to have fallen out of favour in the UK, wrongly branded an unwelcome Americanism by many; the term was first coined in England. Generally it is used only in headlines (where there is a limit on the number of characters) or when specifically discussing football in America.

Association football is the official name of the sport, so called because it is based on the rules originally devised by the (English) Football Association. The full name is used in contexts where it is necessary to distinguish the game from other codes of football: rugby league, rugby union, American football, Canadian football, Australian-rules football (or Aussie- rules football, commonly referred to as footie in Australia) and Gaelic football. Technically the full name of the sport in French and Spanish is football association and fútbol asociación respectively – and FIFA actually stands for Fédération Internationale de Football Association – but these are rarely, if ever, used in those languages. Note that in English it is not unusual for a rugby (league or union) commentator to say something like “that’s excellent football by England” or “that’s excellent use of the football by Wales”.

Watch this space for a follow-up post on vocabulary used to describe the action during matches.

Anglo Premier Translations specialises in sports translations. For more information, visit the main website.

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Pronunciation guide part I: the letter J

This is the first of a series of articles I will post about the pronunciation of foreign names. The articles will focus on famous names in sport that are often mispronounced by sports commentators and presenters.

Commentators and presenters should not be expected to pronounce all foreign names exactly as pronounced in the original language. For instance, it would sound pretentious for commentators to pronounce all French Rs the French way. But they should pronounce names as correctly as possible using phonemes (sounds) that exist in English.

Mispronunciations are often the result of the speaker reading a name as if it were English. But sometimes they occur because the speaker applies the pronunciation rules of one foreign language to a name that’s from another language – usually French, because it is the most familiar foreign language to most people in Britain.

For example, when referring to the controversial Uruguayan footballer Luis Suárez, Liverpool’s manager Brendan Rodgers calls the striker LEW-ee, with a silent S. He does this three times in the following interview alone.

This is a type of hypercorrection, and specifically a hyperforeignism: even though a final S in English words is pronounced, Rodgers believes he is pronouncing the name more correctly by omitting it, when in fact he is not. He almost certainly does so because the French name Louis has a silent S, but final consonants are not silent in Spanish, nor are they in most languages. The correct pronunciation would be LWEES, as a single syllable, but since this is hard to pronounce for an English speaker, an acceptable compromise would be lu-WEESS.

The letter J

Let us look specifically at the subject of this post, the letter J, which is pronounced in a variety of ways in different European languages.

(Since these posts are aimed at non-linguists, I have avoided using phonetic symbols and have written pronunciations in such a way that they can be read as if they were English words. Caps are used to denote the stressed syllable.)

Germanic languages except English (German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic)

The Germanic languages (except English) pronounce the J like the English letter Y. Examples:

  • Jan Ullrich (German)
  • Luuk de Jong (Dutch)
  • Eiður Smári Guðjohnsen (Icelandic)

French and Portuguese

French and Portuguese use a sound that does not exist in native English words, but with which most English speakers are familiar. It is the same sound that occurs in the expression déjà vu. Examples:

  • Jean Alesi (French)
  • José Mourinho (Portuguese)

Catalan

Mispronunciations of a Catalan J are invariably a hyperforeignism, since the letter is pronounced the same as in most English words (e.g. in the word jam).

Sometimes commentators wrongly pronounce it like the J found in other Germanic languages (i.e. a Y sound). For example, during the playing days of Jordi Cruyff, who was given a Catalan first name by his parents (his father Johan was a Barça player at the time), the British media usually pronounced his first name as YOR-di. Perhaps commentators assumed his first name was Dutch, but other Catalan names with a J are also mispronounced as a Y, such as Jordi Alba.

Other times they pronounce it like the Spanish J (see below). Here’s a clip of Stephen Fry in flagrante delicto pronouncing the Catalan word menja as MEN-ha, as if it were a Spanish word, when the correct pronunciation is simply MEN-ja.

Spanish

For the nitpickers, Spanish pronounces the J like the “ch” in the Scottish word loch. But apart from this word the sound doesn’t exist in English, so to simplify matters let’s say that it is pronounced as a H, which is an acceptable alternative for the native English speaker. (Spanish speakers themselves approximate the English H sound, which doesn’t exist in Spanish, like the Spanish letter J.)

An Anglicised pronunciation of the Spanish name Jorge would therefore be HOR-hay. This pronunciation of the letter J (and the letter G if followed by an E or an I) is unique to Spanish, and should not be used for names in other languages, including Catalan.

Spanish, Portuguese or Catalan?

The spellings of Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan names are often very similar or identical (José is written the same in Portuguese and Spanish), so commentators should make sure they know whether athletes have a Spanish, Portuguese or Catalan name so they can pronounce it correctly.

Common Spanish names containing a J pronounced as a H sound: Alejandro, Alejandra, Jaime, Javier, Javiera, Jerónimo, Joaquín, Jorge, José, Josefina, Joel, Juan, Julia, Juliana, Julio.

Common Catalan names containing a J pronounced like an English J: Jaume, Jeroni, Jordi, Joaquim, Josep, Joel, Joan, Júlia.

Common Portuguese names containing a J pronounced like a French J: Jaime, Jerónimo, Jerônimo, João, Joaquim, Jorge, Josefina, Júlia, Júlio.

Juventus

Finally, Juventus is a special case. In Italian, the letter J is only used in words borrowed from foreign langauges. Otherwise, the J sound (as in jam) is always represented by the letter G (Genova) or by the combination “GI” (Giuseppe). The name of the Turin-based club is derived from the Latin iuventus, meaning youth, and is pronounced yu-VEN-tus.

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Anglo Premier col·labora amb el I Open de Tennis de Taula de Sant Quirze / Anglo Premier is sponsoring the inaugural Sant Quirze Table Tennis Open

Cartell del I Open de Sant Quirze del Vallès

[English article below]

Anglo Premier Translations és patrocinador oficial de I Open de Tennis de Taula de Sant Quirze del Vallès, que tindrà lloc el 16 de juny de 2012. D’aquesta manera recolzem un esdeveniment que contribueix a fomentar la salut al nostre entorn local a través de l’esport.

L’Open consisteix en un torneig per a federats, un altre per a no federats, i un tercer per a escolars, de manera que sigui quin sigui el teu nivell, hi pots participar. Podeu fer la inscripció a través del web del club organitzador, el club de tennis de taula de Sant Quirze del Vallès. T’hi atreveixes?

Anglo Premier Translations is an official sponsor of the inaugural Sant Quirze del Vallès Table Tennis Open, which will take place on 16 June 2012. In doing so, we will be supporting an event that promotes good health through sport in our local community.

There is a tournament for league players, non league players and schoolchildren, so players of any level can take part. Players can register on the website of Sant Quirze del Vallès Table Tennis Club. Are you game?

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¿Qué significa el goal average?

Para traducciones profesionales, consulten mi web profesional en www.timtranslates.com.

Según la Fundéu BBVA (antiguamente Fundación del Español Urgente), la correcta españolización del término inglés goal average es golaveraje. Cita el Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas (importante obra de referencia para la lengua española), según el cual el término golaveraje “diferencia de tantos marcados y recibidos y se utiliza para deshacer el empate entre equipos con el mismo número de puntos en la clasificación”. Aunque la Fundéu BBVA admite el uso de golaveraje, recomienda “emplear diferencia (o promedio) de goles, de puntos o de tantos.”

Deja entender que diferencia y promedio se pueden utilizar indistintamente, como también goles, puntos y tantos.

Creo que hay bastantes lagunas en la nota de la Fundéu BBVA, las cuales intentaré exponer.

Empecemos por explicar de donde surge la necesidad de esta terminología. En las ligas de fútbol, si los dos primeros equipos tienen los mismos puntos, el reglamento especifica, por orden de importancia, los criterios que se utilizarán para desempatar a los dos equipos.

Muchos seguidores de fútbol se sorprenderían al ver la clasificación final de la liga española por la temporada 2006/07:

[TABLE=2]

La columna GA es el número de goles marcados a favor del equipo menos el número de goles marcados en contra. Es lo que en inglés llamamos la goal difference, es decir, la diferencia de goles. Mucha gente se sorprendería al ver esta clasificación, pues en la mayoría de ligas la diferencia de goles es el primer criterio que utiliza para desempatar a dos equipos con los mismos puntos. En los medios de comunicación en español (y los medios que copian las formulaciones españolas en otras lenguas, como el catalán o el gallego), se suele hablar de goal average, que viene del inglés (a pesar de que average se suele pronunciar como si fuera una palabra francesa) aunque no sea el término utilizado en inglés para este concepto. En inglés significa promedio de goles.

En la liga española, si hay dos equipos empatados, el primer criterio que se aplica es el del resultado total de los dos encuentros entre dichos equipos. Por eso el Real Madrid ganó la liga en 2006/07, y no el Barça, que sí que habría ganado si se aplicaran los mismos criterios que en muchos otros países. Pero curiosamente, aquella temporada oímos y leímos que el Real Madrid “ganó por el goal average“, cosa que parece una contradicción si consultamos la liga, según la cual el “GA” del equipo catalán fue de +45 y el del equipo madrileño solo fue de +26.

Para diferenciar entre estos dos tipos de goal average, a veces se distingue entre goal average particular (en este caso, en inglés hablaríamos de “the results between the teams level on points”, es decir, los resultados entre los equipos con los mismos puntos) y goal average global, pero no se suele hacer esta distinción.

Si en inglés decimos goal difference, y no goal average, ¿cómo es que en español se ha adoptado este anglicismo?

No sé cuando entró este anglicismo al español. No pude encontrar ningún ejemplo en el Corpus Diacrónico del Español. Pero su introducción al español probablemente fue anterior a los años setenta del siglo pasado. De hecho, antes de los años setenta, sí que se hablaba de goal average en inglés cuando había que desempatar a equipos con el mismo número de puntos. Sin embargo, entonces se refería a otro concepto.

Como sugiere la palabra “average”, se calculaba esta cifra haciendo una división, y no una sustracción. El goal average era el resultado de dividir el número de goles a favor por el número de goles en contra. En 1930/31, por ejemplo, empataron por puntos el Athletic Club de Bilbao, el Rácing Santander y el Real Sociedad, pero ganó el campeonato el Athletic Club de Bilbao, con un promedio de goles de 2,2, contra 1,3 y 1,0 para el Rácing Santander y el Real Sociedad respectivamente.

Por tanto, el anglicismo goal average, o goal averaje, se utiliza en los medios de comunicación españoles para tres conceptos diferentes:

  • Los resultados entre equipos empatados por puntos (sistema actual de la liga española)
  • La diferencia de goles (sistema de la mayoría de ligas del mundo)
  • El promedio de goles (sistema antiguo), hablando de contextos históricos

En vez de insistir, simplemente, en que hay que evitar goal average, ¿no sería mejor que la Fundéu BBVA explicara estas diferencias y propusiera terminología coherente para distinguir entre los tres conceptos? Propone utilizar diferencia y promedio indistintamente, y parece decirnos que también hablar de diferencia de puntos, pero teniendo en cuenta que en el campeonato los puntos y los goles no tienen nada que ver el uno con el otro es una propuesta, a mi entender, no muy buena.

El artículo del Diccionario panhispánico de dudas es un poco mejor, aunque deja entender que el inglés goal average significa diferencia de goles.

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Consecutive interpreting

If you want to see an excellent example of good consecutive interpreting in a pressure situation, watch the two videos here (you have to watch an advert first if you’re outside the UK). He does an excellent job. I was particularly impressed when he almost instantaneously translated “no me muero” as “I won’t lose any sleep”. I should also mention his accent, which of course is the purest, clearest form of English that exists! Not that I’m biased.

I have two things to say regarding Maradona’s assertion that his goal was just the same Geoff Hurst’s second and England’s third goal in the 1966 world cup final. First, nobody has definitively established whether the ball crossed the line or not, whereas Maradona’s “Hand of God” goal is clearly with the hand. Second, even if the ball did not cross the line, Geoff Hurst did not score by cheating; Maradona did.

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Talk about a pressure job

Fabio Capello has just managed his first England game, with a 2-1 win over Switzerland. Though he claims he speaks to his players in English, he still prefers to do all his press conferences in his native Italian.

As I was watching his post-match interview, I was thinking how much pressure the interpreter must have been under: the interview would have been seen by millions, some of whom will understand Italian and would have spotted any mistakes in the translation. Of course, providing the interpreter knows a bit about football, this wasn’t a difficult interview to be interpreting per se. In fact, I understand the vast majority of what Capello said myself, through similarity between Italian and the three and a half Romance languages I speak. But I certainly would have been rather nervous with so many people watching on TV. I think he did a pretty good job. Judge for yourselves.

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Congratulations to Sheffield FC!

Congratulations to Sheffield FC on their 150th anniversary. Sheffield FC — not to be confused with Sheffield Wednesday or Sheffield United — may be a small team in the lower reaches of amateur football, but they are officially recognised as the world’s oldest football club. They were born way back in 1857! So alongside Yorkshire pudding, rugby league and fish and chips you can add football to the list of things Yorkshire gave the world.

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Shortage of sports translators

It’s a shame I can’t translate from Chinese. According to this report, the organisers of the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing are struggling to find translators and interpreters who can work in this field. In a survey of 15,000 translators, less than 1.3 percent were found to be good at sports translations.

Feel free to contact me for other events in which my source languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan) will be more useful, including:

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