A cross, a long ball, a step over, a Rabona kick or a swinging cross are for sure crucial elements of the sport, but football is more than just match commentary.
It is often overlooked, but in the United Kingdom alone the Beautiful Game generates revenue in the region of Euro 7.2 billion and entails a lot more than just what happens on the pitch. As with all modern industries, behind the scenes, there are several extremely specialised sectors involved, which are not necessarily initially connected with the world’s popular sport.
The world of football requires the drafting (and translation) of legal, medical, commercial, contractual, insurance, hotel, and advertising-related documentation. Lace your boots up because now we’ll show you exactly what kind of translations are needed for the football sector.
Football is a much-loved sport and across the globe millions of fans browse sports publications for news on their favourite teams and players. Football companies, as well as newspapers and journals, sporting organisations, websites and blogs, all have their content translated into other languages to increase participation by the international football public. All the largest football clubs have areas on their websites and social media translated into other languages – especially English – such as Arabic, Indonesian, Hindi and Chinese. Knowing how to transmit the passion for the game and involve an international audience requires expert translators who have an in-depth knowledge of the game terminology, the language and the relevant culture; they also need the right writing skills to commentate on matches, provide background information, describe goals and every important move and win by the teams. Having translated technical reports and comments on some of the most historical matches, definitely gives us a head start in the world of translating football.
This is without doubt a key factor in the world of football-related translations. The sheer quantity of legal documents required by the sport is enormous. We aren’t just talking about players’ contracts, but a network of sponsorship and service-related contracts that the clubs enter into, such as general terms and conditions for stadiums, tickets, events and competitions. Not to mention appeals lodged with sporting tribunals (such as CAS – Court of Arbitration for Sport – in Lausanne) and every other document that is necessary for the internal management of companies, which, when it comes to the top teams, employ hundreds of staff. Being able to rely on professional translators is a top priority for leading clubs right through to smaller local teams, where even the tiniest mistake can cause significant damage in terms of revenue.
This is another highly requested sector in terms of translations. In a nutshell, football clubs invoice and sell a lot.
Merchandising for top clubs is of key importance for business and a team of translators used for the translation work for online stores must have the necessary technical know-how to describe the products on sale. A shirt is just another piece of clothing if it isn’t backed with history. And what better history than football? We aren’t just talking about the fashion aspect though. Products need SEOs, style, copywriting, storytelling and creativity in order to be successful. Those are all aspects that only a professional translation agency and expert translators can offer for such a niche customer.
You can only talk about football if you know how to communicate.
Commentating on the passion of the stadium crowd, the tears witnessed from the stands or the joy demonstrated by a striker requires not only the proper writing skills but also an in-depth knowledge of the target language and culture. We are talking about specialised translators who can reproduce, adapt or, even, rewrite texts based on the original content to transmit emotions from one culture to another.
Football clubs need to involve their fan base in all languages and encourage them to continue to follow the team irrespective of their performance and results.
We have seen that translations for the sports sector and the football sector in particular, aren’t necessarily for everyone. Using automatic translation tools or unqualified translators can have negative repercussions that not even the smallest club can afford.
There is another aspect for consideration however that is finally being addressed: inclusivity.
For numerous years, football has been seen as a male-driven and white sport. It is now clear that when talking about football we need to use inclusive and respectful language when it comes to differences, without necessarily being gender specific and absolutely that is not in any way offensive (even unintentionally) for the public of other cultures, or with respect to gender, religion or ethnicity.
Translators must be really careful in terms of what they write, making sure they use correctly neutral or specific terminology for men’s and women’s football, avoiding cultural references that could be misunderstood or otherwise deemed offensive by some members of the public. This is not a factor to be underestimated and expert translators know how to navigate the challenges to guarantee content that is effective and aligned with readers.
We can safely say we are experts. We started translating for this sector more than ten years ago, working with international companies on specialised content spanning a number of areas. If you are passionate about football, you will almost certainly have read (or heard) the material we translated.
If your club is on the lookout for high-quality translation services in this field, we can confidently say we have the professional know-how and expertise to assist you. Contact us for a free estimate and to discuss how best to meet your business and translation needs.
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