THREE WEDDINGS AND THE OLYMPICS
Well the wedding was absolutely wonderful. It was great to see all our friends and family from around the world and marvellous to have such a lovely and exciting day. And however amazing it all was, nothing compared with walking my little girl down the aisle with tears in my eyes.
Three weddings in just over a year are enough to tax anyone’s resources: physical, mental and financial, so how do I feel now it’s all over? Relieved, exhausted and broke!
At least now I can stop worrying about arrangements, buying new clothes (at least for weddings), seating plans and the like, and refocus on all the exciting things that are happening elsewhere.
One of these is, of course, the Olympics. thebigword has been appointed to provide interpreters for the Olympic Games and Paralympics in London. This is our second Olympics, after already localising the website for the Beijing Paralympics in 2008. We are also most definitely aiming for Rio de Janeiro in 2016 because there are not many Brits who – like me – have already participated in two Olympic Games and are aiming for a third, and I reckon Sir Steve Redgrave might be too old by 2016.
Seriously, though, a great deal of work is going into ensuring that the organisers, volunteers, VIPs and Olympians can all speak to each other when they arrive in London. Otherwise it will all turn into a kind of Tower of Babel populated by very fit people. Looking at the English summer so far and the weather forecast, I think we should be majoring on interpreting ‘rain’, ‘umbrella’, ‘puddle’ and similar.
The Olympics provides one of those very rare opportunities when the world comes to the UK and we’ve seen huge excitement already as the Olympic Torch has travelled around 8,000 miles, wending its way through towns and villages. Looking at this list, and remembering how many languages we’re going to be working in, I guess it’s good news that almost everyone can pronounce ‘London’.
We are very proud to have been able to have worked with the International School of Linguists (ISL) who have in turn worked in conjunction with Leeds Metropolitan University to provide Language Tests for many of the thousands of interpreters.
The news has just flashed up that we are expecting as much rainfall in the next 48 hours as would normally fall in the whole of July. So I am trying to think of some positive words to say about all the rain, but I can’t! For those of you in the UK, keep dry. For those in other countries I hope you are all very hot and sticky.
Have a great weekend.
Larry
Three weddings in just over a year are enough to tax anyone’s resources: physical, mental and financial, so how do I feel now it’s all over? Relieved, exhausted and broke!
At least now I can stop worrying about arrangements, buying new clothes (at least for weddings), seating plans and the like, and refocus on all the exciting things that are happening elsewhere.
One of these is, of course, the Olympics. thebigword has been appointed to provide interpreters for the Olympic Games and Paralympics in London. This is our second Olympics, after already localising the website for the Beijing Paralympics in 2008. We are also most definitely aiming for Rio de Janeiro in 2016 because there are not many Brits who – like me – have already participated in two Olympic Games and are aiming for a third, and I reckon Sir Steve Redgrave might be too old by 2016.
Seriously, though, a great deal of work is going into ensuring that the organisers, volunteers, VIPs and Olympians can all speak to each other when they arrive in London. Otherwise it will all turn into a kind of Tower of Babel populated by very fit people. Looking at the English summer so far and the weather forecast, I think we should be majoring on interpreting ‘rain’, ‘umbrella’, ‘puddle’ and similar.
The Olympics provides one of those very rare opportunities when the world comes to the UK and we’ve seen huge excitement already as the Olympic Torch has travelled around 8,000 miles, wending its way through towns and villages. Looking at this list, and remembering how many languages we’re going to be working in, I guess it’s good news that almost everyone can pronounce ‘London’.
We are very proud to have been able to have worked with the International School of Linguists (ISL) who have in turn worked in conjunction with Leeds Metropolitan University to provide Language Tests for many of the thousands of interpreters.
The news has just flashed up that we are expecting as much rainfall in the next 48 hours as would normally fall in the whole of July. So I am trying to think of some positive words to say about all the rain, but I can’t! For those of you in the UK, keep dry. For those in other countries I hope you are all very hot and sticky.
Have a great weekend.
Larry
