50 volunteers are getting ready for the task of covering Olympic press briefings. Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the 2008 Olympiad (BOCOG) has announced that Renmin University and University of Missouri-Columbia (shown in our illustration) signed up for a volunteer project in which the two universities will cooperate to select and train 50 English-native-speaker volunteers for 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

The University of Missouri-Columbia will recruit graduates and undergraduates and train them during this semester with special knowledge and skills to ensure those students will be competent for the tasks assigned by BOCOG in the 2008 Olympic Games.

Much of their work of their tasks will be writing press conference highlights. Not a job to be envied.

These students will be involved in BOCOG’s Olympic News Services (ONS) team which will be under Media Operations Department’s direction.

Renmin University will provide the volunteers with free accommodation and will also present lectures on Chinese culture.

University of Missouri-Columbia is one of thirteen international universities who will recruit and train ONS volunteers for BOCOG.

These are but part of a larger team. There will be 300 English native speakers trained in BOCOG’s Olympic News Service International Volunteers Project. Six cooperating Beijing Universities will take care of their housing. The international universities are mainly from the United States, Britain and Australia.
Source: China View

All over the world the reporting on preparation for the Beijing 2008 Olympics is a hot topic for every newspaper. Reading the reports one senses a slow change from downright hostility to something approaching reason. Perhaps before too long the press will become Beijing Games 2008 boosters. Or perhaps that is too much to ask.

This report from Nova Scotia states China will be on target to host arguably the most spectacular, competitive and expensive Games in history.

Beijing is spending a record $34 billion to build and renovate 37 competition venues and construct hundreds of miles of new highways and subway lines.

(It is difficult to separate the figures out. What is normal improvement to the country’s superstructure and what is special efforts from the Games? Frequently the publicity fuzzies the picture but the figure quoted seems, on the face of it, to be an over-estimate.)

This report takes a slightly negative stance: ‘While the country’s Communist Party governance may be adept at meeting schedules, officials may be unable to clear Beijing’s air and prevent gridlock during the 16-day-long Games.’

In fact, Beijing has already demonstrated it can prevent gridlock by just banning a lot of cars from the roads and, now, making a lot of bicyles available.

Pollution is another matter but the government has already started pushing polluting industry away from Beijing while others will be closed down for the duration of the Games.

A study of 15 large Asian cities released in January by the Asian Development Bank found Beijing suffered the dirtiest air, with 142 micrograms of pollution particles per cubic metre. That was five times New York City’s average and more than seven times above the World Health Organization’s target for large cities.

Sun Weide, deputy director for the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games said that to improve air quality during the Games, Beijing will force vehicles with substandard emissions off the roads, restrict production at factories in Beijing and surrounding areas and increase parkland. He said 28 million trees were planted in and around Beijing last year.

Beijing has kept construction on schedule. The 91,000-seat National Stadium and all other venues will be completed by March.

To smooth the way for as many as 1.5 million tourists expected to visit Beijing during the Olympics, Beijing is building a $3.6 billion airport addition that will more than double its size.

And the attitude towards visitors will be improved. Sun Weide said, ‘The Olympic Games will provide lots of opportunity for education. We’re trying to encourage the public to use elegant language, provide good service and of course to refrain from all kinds of spitting or cutting in line.’

The sudden world attention during the Olympics will be a ‘catalyst’ for positive change, according to International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge.

He said, ‘I am convinced that as much as the Games will enable the people of China to develop a new vision of their own society, they will help athletes and visitors gain a fairer perspective on China.’
Source: ChronicleHerald

In almost every area China has the Olympics wondrously well organized. The last two mountains to climb are pollution and language. Something plainly is being done about pollution especially as the world’s press has picked it up as an useful and continuing story. Language is something else again. According to a report issued by Ministry of Education (MOE), China has set strict standards on the use of both Chinese and English in the service industry.

The report showed that China has regulated the Chinese to English translation for such service as washing rooms, restaurants and hotels to help visitors to know where they are and what they are. The regulation also includes ways of translation for Chinese cuisine. A coordination work team has also been established to carry out language training programs.

Statistics suggest that by the end of 2005, more than 4.1 million residents in Beijing had learned foreign languages. That is 30% if the population.

This statement needs to be regarded in the light of the definition of the world ‘learned.’ The writer learned French at school and is a whiz at telling you that his uncle’s pen is in the garden of his aunt. Which is interesting but less than totally useful. So it could be said one has ‘learned’ French without having the faintest idea how to speak it in the real world. So the suggestion that 30% of the population of Beijing has ‘learned’ English may well, on the face of it, be true. That is not to say that they can speak and understand English. At least, not well. This is not true of the younger generation. Young students possibly would be the best bet as interpreters. (In our illustration there is no apparent problem in communication. This encounter happened during a friendly match between China and Queen’s Park Rangers.)

Nearly 200,000 people in 11 businesses such as tourism have received some language training to improve service for the Olympics.A number of books on the English speaking during the Olympic Games and the volunteer service training have been published. The map of Beijing is also published in Chinese, English and French on the official website of the organizing committee for the Beijing Olympics.

Li Yuming, an official with the Ministry of Education in charge of language administration, said that the language usage for the Olympic Games still had problems.

For example, China has two table tennis players Ma Lin and Ma Long.
If you put their given names ahead of their first names, following international practice, their names will appear the same as ‘L. Ma’ which is confusing.

The official also said that translation of the names of places and roads in Beijing also need some regulation.

This will be the one area that will be difficult to get right. Reverse the situation and think of the games in, say, London. And imagine the majority of the visitors are Chinese.

How successful would London be at making sure enough people learned enough Chinese to be useful? Quite so.
Source: JongoNews