In the summer of 2009, one of our clients, the Russian Football Union, asked us to help with Russia’s bid to host one of the upcoming FIFA World Cups.
At first, the Bid Committee only needed written translations. We translated bidding requirements into Russian, then the bid book, and then numerous documents into English. We also had to notarize our translations and copies of documents.
Shortly afterwards, experts and commissions started visiting candidate cities. That’s where consecutive interpretation came into the picture, which we had to perform from dawn to dusk during talks, receptions, stadium and hotel visits, sightseeing tours, etc.
Russia’s selection as a FIFA World Cup host was a great achievement both for the country and for Russian Translation Company. We provided full language support for the winning bid. There was one exception, though. We did not translate the legendary speech by Minister of Sport of the Russian Federation Vitaly Mutko when he said, “Let me spik from my hart.”
Active Stage
No matter how hard we worked at the bidding stage, much more remained to be done.
Russian Translation Company translated legal and technical documents, marketing and training materials, guidelines, standards, and correspondence. We also provided interpretation services during workshops, inspections, meetings, conferences, and other gatherings attended by the Russian Minister of Sports and FIFA officials. RPK was also made responsible for technical support, thanks to the fact that we owned conference equipment - microphones, booths, and simultaneous interpretation and audio recording equipment.
Events took place in all the fourteen candidate cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Volgograd, Kazan, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Saransk, Sochi, Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar, Yaroslavl, and Podolsk (the last three were later excluded from the list). The main working language was English, but we also had to work with Portuguese, German, Spanish, Italian, Serbian, Greek, and other languages.
Three events were particularly memorable:
● Interpretation for Minister of Sport of the Russian Federation Vitaly Mutko during his trip to Lausanne, Switzerland. This in itself may not seem particularly remarkable, were it not for the fact that we were informed of the Minister’s trip less than 24 hours before he was set to board the plane.
● A Supervisory Board meeting attended by President Putin. This was not the first time Russian Translation Company had organized interpretation and technical support for a head of state, but every time it is a thrill.
● Live interpretation for an episode of the Evening Urgant talk show hosted by Ivan Urgant where the mascot for the World Cup was selected. Live interpretation for a TV show is not easy, but it is definitely exciting!
Confederation Cup and World Cup
Sadly, the tender for language support that was held right before the Confederation Cup went to another translation company. And we have to admit that it hurt to not be able to see this project, which we had been working on for eight years, through to the end. But the main job had been done: Russia had been selected to host the World Cup and the preparations for hosting the event had gone perfectly. The thank-you letter we received from the Russia 2018 Organizing Committee reads: “The heritage of the 2018 World Cup will include the contribution your company made to it.”
Photos
We are masters of the word, after all!