Si, Oui, Hai: Interpreting joy and heartbreak at Tokyo Games

TOKYO – Ask him however galore languages helium speaks, and Alexandre Ponomarev replies: “If you mean to marque myself understood, I've mislaid count.”

Count 'em. Ponomarev speaks Russian, Ukranian, English, German, Spanish, French and Danish. And gets by successful Swedish, Portuguese, Italian and Norwegian.

Ahh, but however astir your Japanese?

“Muzukashi,” replied Ponomarev, which means “difficult” successful Japanese, and tin beryllium interpreted to mean helium doesn't talk much.

OK, nobody's perfect.

Ponomarev is the main interpreter for the Tokyo Games, overseeing a unit of astir 100 interpreters who render Olympic joyousness and Olympic heartbreak into a calibrated cacophony of 11 languages: Japanese, English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Italian, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Portuguese.

Ponomarev worked his archetypal Olympics successful 2008 successful Beijing and took implicit arsenic the main successful Rio de Janeiro successful 2016. His parent got him started with connection learning, smuggling DVDs of American films into the aged Soviet Union. One by one, the languages piled up.

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“When idiosyncratic walks into a country afloat of interpreters, and it's idiosyncratic who doesn’t talk the languages, it does consciousness similar the Tower of Babel," helium explained. "You tin spot radical speaking astatine the aforesaid clip successful each these dialects and languages and utilizing unusual words. It whitethorn look brainsick but we are really not.”

What they are successful Tokyo is busy.

Most enactment successful the Main Press Center successful a cable-strewn country with 20 translation booths lining the walls. Wires, screens, and machine coders splice their words onto a network. The booths are decorated with Japanese creation from celebrated masters similar Hokusai, and transportation labels similar JPN oregon ENG to designate the languages being worked.

Unlike erstwhile Olympics, each the mentation is being done remotely. Press conferences from distant venues are fed into the press-center hub. Some 2 dozens interpreters aren't adjacent successful the country, chiming successful from the Americas oregon Europe to grip precocious nighttime events successful Japan.

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Their simultaneous translations tin beryllium accessed astatine each Olympic venues connected an app. This eliminates interpreters getting tied up successful postulation heading to a venue — and there's nary longer immoderate request to administer handheld translation devices.

“We are present successful the property halfway each the time, and we ticker the events connected the TV conscionable similar anybody else,” said Andrea Hofmann Miller, a German interpreter. “In Rio, we had to beryllium connected the autobus for astir 4 hours conscionable to get to the swimming venue. And successful my case, if a German-speaking jock didn't win, we spent 8 hours connected a autobus for nothing.”

Ponomarev pointed retired that taste differences impact language. He whitethorn delegate a talker of Brazilian Portuguese to a Brazilian, and a peninsular Portuguese talker to idiosyncratic from Portugal; likewise with Spanish, which is spoken otherwise crossed 20 countries.

A visitant entering his bureau the different time recovered Ponomarev speaking Spanish with an accent from Spain. He was chatting with an Argentine, a Venezuelan and different Spaniard. They were each speaking their ain marque of Spanish, and a fewer times they slipped into French.

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“When you get 4 oregon 5 interpreters successful the room, and they each stock astatine slightest 2 oregon 3 languages, they automatically power backmost and forth,” Ponomarev explained. “The speech starts successful 1 connection past rapidly switches to different simply due to the fact that different connection is much conducive to talking astir a circumstantial topic.”

For a polyglot, toggling among respective connection seems much earthy than staying successful lone one, benignant of similar a instrumentalist who plays respective instruments. He utilized the illustration of the German connection “shadenfreude," which means pleasance derived from the misfortune of others.

"This benignant of connection exists lone successful German and it would beryllium hard to explicit that conception successful English. By the aforesaid token, determination are concepts that beryllium lone successful Russia and we don’t convey them precise good successful immoderate different language. To debar lengthy descriptions, we power to different connection and radical volition recognize instantly.”

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He said his interpreters each bony up earlier the Olympics, studying the nuances of judo oregon the vagaries of Modern Pentathlon. But they tin beryllium stumped, peculiarly successful caller events similar surfing and skateboarding.

“These are young radical and they person their ain speak,” helium said. "If idiosyncratic says ‘the question are bad, man' — meaning the waves were great.”

Ponomarev and overmuch of his unit person worked high-powered governmental events similar the G20 oregon the World Economic Forum, which are acold trickier than the Olympics.

“There you person a wide assortment of radical — presidents, royalty, politicians, absorbing influencers, you sanction it," helium said.

Sometimes, though, things tin get incredibly delicate astatine the Olympics. Hofmann Miller astir teared up talking astir the 2010 Winter Games successful Vancouver, wherever Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili died successful a grooming tally earlier the opening ceremony. He mislaid power of this sled and deed a alloy rod beside the track.

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“I was chosen to bash the property interrogation for that, and it was a very, precise bittersweet lawsuit and I volition ne'er hide that,” she said. “It was precise moving, and it was truly pugnacious for each of america sitting connected signifier taking the questions from the property and to support our emotions back.”

Interpretation is, successful the end, much creation than subject — a subject that requires skill, yes, but a beardown dose of humanity arsenic well. Both Ponomarev and the German interpreter, Hofmann Miller, admit cheering for the athletes, oregon sympathizing with them successful defeat.

“We each get perfectly excited for these athletes,” Ponomarev said. “Because erstwhile you interpret, you’re successful idiosyncratic else’s head. You don’t construe words, you construe meaning. And erstwhile you’re successful somebody’s head, you commencement sympathizing.”

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