Audiences around the world often struggle to find World Cup commentary in their native tongue

Late last year, the Public Broadcasting Services (PBS) of the small Mediterranean island of Malta decided against transmitting the matches of the 2014 World Cup in the Maltese language. Instead, the tournament will be shown in English commentary beamed live from stadia in Brazil. Many of Malta’s inhabitants are multilingual, fluent in English and Italian, so the broadcaster reasoned it could save the expense of offering commentary in the national language. It wasn’t just penny-pinching that motivated the decision, but sheer embarrassment: Maltese commentators, PBS suggested, were just not up to the job.

During two previous major football tournaments (Euro 2012 and the 2010 World Cup), commentary on the public broadcaster was littered with errors, odd digressions, and fuzzy ideas. A source inside PBS complained to Malta Today – an English-language newspaper – of the typically “poor quality” of Maltese commentators, who tended to “blabber on without describing what is going on in the pitch.” One match announcer was under the illusion that the country of Yugoslavia still existed. Sitting in studios far away from the action, the commentators seemed to be demonstrating their remove not only from the matches they were summarising, but from the world itself. These gaffes cost Maltese viewers the chance of hearing the 2014 World Cup narrated in their own language.

Speakers of large international languages (like English, Arabic, and Spanish) can take for granted their immediacy and ease of access to the World Cup. The tournament is lavishly packaged and expertly delivered to them in their own tongues. For speakers of small languages – particularly those that share media space with bigger languages – the experience of accessing a major event like the World Cup can be comical and frustrating. Sometimes, it can be even a wounding reminder of their own smallness. George Micallef, a much-respected Maltese sports journalist, protested PBS’s decision to scrap commentary in his language. “I am hurt by this decision,” he said. “I do not expect the national broadcaster to ignore the Maltese language in such a blatant way.” More.

See: Al Jazeera America

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