Olympic Vocabulary - Diving
In the past 2 years, I have had quite a few chances to interpret for Irish Olympic teams during their visits here in Fukuroi during their practices as well as exchange events with the local community, mainly the judo team, the swimming team and the diving team.
Unfortunately, before this, I had exactly 0 experience sports interpreting! By and large, the rules of sports interpreting and regular interpreting are not much different, but not knowing the necessary specialized vocabulary often made things difficult. Ahead of the Olympics next year, I have decided to start making up vocabulary lists with some of the key vocabulary related to the sports of the teams that will be staying in Fukuroi.
I’m also making them available online because I don’t know how many times I’ve wished for a vocabulary list related to a specific subject and not been able to find one. It’s probably not the most sophisticated way of finding vocabulary, but I am reading Wikipedia pages in Japanese related to the specific sports and the corresponding English article at the same time and picking out the most important phrases.
In April of 2019, 3 members of the Irish Diving Team and 2 staff members came to Japan ahead of the FINA Diving World Cup, where they trained at the ToBio Pool in Hamamatsu. My coworker and I took turns interpreting for the teams during their training sessions and exchange events with the local people. I really enjoyed getting to chat with Olly, Clare and Tanya after their training sessions. They even were so nice as to bring me up onto the high dive platform and let me take a photo up there! But wow, it was terrifying. I don't know how Tanya did it! Sandra, the team manager, was wonderful to talk to as well. She had lots of really great stories about diving and the Olympics. A highlight was when we were all very kindly invited to a BBQ at ACT Tower in Hamamatsu by the American Diving Team. I'm really looking forward to the Diving Team coming back in April for the FINA World Cup, and getting to catch up with everyone!
Back to the vocabulary, here are some important phrases related to diving. Here is a Quizlet set containing all of the words with their readings and English meanings in case you want to study up on them yourself!