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International Trivia

• Athletes, coaches, and officials from a total of 205 nations and regions are attending the Beijing Olympics.
• They will be served in 55 different languages with three official languages: English, French, Chinese.
• Foreign language hotlines are open around the clock.
• Language services are provided in all Olympic venues.
• Approx 5,000 oral interpretation services are being provided, and the daily output of translated materials is around 500,000 characters.
• In 2007, Beijing fought against bad translations. While many people loved the huge translation errors throughout the city, Beijing wanted them removed before the games started. So ten teams of linguistic monitors patrolled the city's parks, museums, subway stations, and other public places searching for gaffes to fix. New translations, especially for signs, were unveiled earlier this year.
• There was a very interesting controversy between Taiwan and China that was simply due to language. The way the Chinese wanted to refer to the Olympic Taiwan team was not acceptable to the Taiwanese and almost forced a boycott. But the difference was very minor to the outsider: Zhongguo Taipei (Chinese version) rather than Zhonghua Taipei (Taiwanese version). Nevertheless, the Chinese version made the Taiwanese feel that they were in submission to China. The Chinese acquiesced in order to avoid a boycott.

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