Interpretation exercises are an essential part of an interpreter’s training. This speech on the Iberian Lynx will help you practice your consecutive and simultaneous interpreting skills. Note: The Speech starts STRAIGHT AWAY!
Topic(s): Sports
Terms: WorldAtlas, soccer, volleyball, basketball, baseball, rugby, golf, handball, pitch, deal-breaker, Cristiano Ronaldo, field player, ice hockey, Lionel Messi, dirt pitch, goal line
Sources:
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Good For Practicing:
- Interpreting note-taking
- Simultaneous interpreting
- Standard British accent
Also available on Speechpool.
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Script*:
*Please check the script only after you’ve done the note-taking exercise, otherwise that’s cheating! 🙂
According to the WorldAtlas, the most popular sport in the world is football, also known as ‘soccer’ in North America. The sport has more than 4 billion fans around the world; to put this in perspective, the second most popular sport is cricket, with 2.5 billion fans, and football alone has about as many fans as volleyball, basketball, baseball, rugby and golf combined.
By why? Why is ‘the beautiful game’, as the fans call it, such a massive success around the world?
So, one day I raised this question to a friend of mine who’s a massive football fan, and he gave me a surprising answer: football is popular because it’s the most inclusive of all team sports.
I don’t really like football, but his answer changed my perspective a little bit.
Here’s the first fact he mentioned. In football, it doesn’t matter if you’re short or tall: there’s always a position for you on the pitch. Think about basketball, volleyball, handball, etc; in these sports, more often than not, your height (or lack thereof) is a deal-breaker. In football, however, that’s not the case. For example: Cristiano Ronaldo, who is considered to be very tall for a field player, is 1.87 metres tall (or 6 foot 2); that would be considered to be too short in any of the other sports I just mentioned.
Second: unlike rugby, ice hockey or American football, you also don’t need to be particularly strong or bulky. Strength will help you a great deal, but many of the best players in the world are known for their relatively fragile build. Lionel Messi weights around 66 kilograms (that’s 145 pounds.) In fact, weighting less than 75 kilos is perfectly common for a football player.
Third, football is relatively easy to understand (i.e., the rules are less complex than most other team sports), and most importantly, it’s one of the cheapest sports to play. Children all around the world can play barefoot on a dirt pitch with a ball made of old pieces of fabric while using stones, sticks or piles of sand to mark the goal line. That’s actually how my friend used to play as a child in his country of origin, and that applies to millions of children all around the world.
In conclusion, his answer completely changed the way I see football. I’ll probably remain unenthusiastic about the game, but there appears to be a lot of truth in his answer. Today, I feel I have a better understanding as to why it is such a popular sport.
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