This blog is from Stephen Lauer, our University of Maryland student, affectionately known to all as "scuba steve."

After day three of handball group play, interviewing and writing flash quotes from the athletes is still as thrilling and stressful as the first day.  The great part about flash quotes is that, from the training sessions to the first couple games, we have developed relationships with the athletes.  The athletes talk about the incredible highs and devastating losses, it truly humanizes the athletes for people who have only ever been fans and seen them as pawns to be played or traded in order to win a championship.  That is incredible for me.  However, the downside to all of this that occasionally we cannot speak to the athletes.

Of all the teams that qualified for Olympic Women’s Handball, only Germany, Norway, Romania, and Sweden speak enough English to be interviewed without translation.  Rarely have I felt as ignorant as when we started and I realized that I could not speak directly to eight of the twelve teams; while a few players on each team would try to speak a few words of English, I didn’t even know where to start in Portuguese, Hungarian (yes, they have their own language), Russian, Korean, or Romanian (yes, them too).  Starting with France, I decided to make an effort, I said “bonjour” before the interview and “merci bo coup” afterwards, I got a smile and an appreciative nod from my interviewee Stephanie Cano.  From there I learned simple phrases in Korean (an-yo-han-sai-yo, hello), Hungarian (yo-napot, good afternoon), and Norwegian (bra kamp, good match).

However, my problem was not only could I not understand the athletes, but I couldn’t communicate with my translator.  Language Services provides ONS with many, very nice Chinese students who know the tongues of the competing countries; unfortunately, this means they speak Russian, Hungarian, or Korean, and Chinese, but only minimal English.  This means that, in order to interview the athletes, we need to go through a Chinese to English translator as well.  One can imagine that it is quite difficult to get the full quote when it goes through two translators, not to mention ask a quick follow up question.  In these first few days, we have identified which Language Services workers have strong English or can conduct interviews themselves (once given our questions), and found other multi-lingual staff throughout the building to help with our flash quotes.

All in all, this experience motivates me to learn another language after these Olympics.  With so many nations around the world struggling to learn English, I would like to return the favor by making an effort to learn their language.