Multilingual soccer terminology list

Abstract

n 2010, the World’s biggest sporting event, the FIFA World Cup, will take place in South Africa for the first time. The Terminology Coordination Section (TCS) of the National Language Service (NLS) therefore deemed it fit to initiate the Soccer Terminology Project to ensure that each and every South African gets the opportunity to be acquainted with the relevant information pertaining to the World Cup in their own language. Furthermore, this Project not only seeks to facilitate effective communication between broadcasters, journalists, commentators and their listeners, but also to document the multilingual soccer terms in the National Term Bank. This glossary of terms has about 348 entries. The source text was developed from a long-existing soccer terminology list compiled in 1982, which had about 800 terms but no definitions. TCS requested the South African Football Association (SAFA) for help with the relevance and comprehensiveness of the term list. They recommended Mr Ian McLeod, a former PSL referee, who assisted with the elimination of outdated terms and discussed the definitions of the remaining terms with the Project Team. The definitions were thoroughly looked into, completed and edited by the in-house editorial committee. The source text was then circulated to identified specialists to supply target language equivalents. Thereafter, a working meeting was held in Pretoria in March 2009. Different terminologists had interviews with the media and the public was given the opportunity to make comments on the developed terms. At various consultative workshops, the collaborator groups, experts and speakers of different languages gave their inputs and the term list was updated. The National Language Bodies (NLBs) of the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB), verified and authenticated the coined terms. They gave their stamp of approval for the dissemination of the terminology to the general public. The terminology will be disseminated electronically and in hard copy to all provincial government offices. It will also be made available on the DAC website.