On the evening of 4 October, the 20th Asian Games in Aichi and Nagoya closed after sixteen days of competition. Almost 11,000 athletes from 45 National Olympic Committees took part, across 43 sports and 469 events. The Chinese delegation finished with 169 gold, 89 silver and 83 bronze medals, topping the gold-medal table for the twelfth consecutive edition and setting a new high for a Chinese team at an away Games. According to the Olympic Council of Asia, the event produced 54 world records. Now that the stadiums have emptied, one element of the organisation deserves a closer look from the language industry.
Around 40,000 volunteers supported the Asian Games and the upcoming Asian Para Games, and the organising committee classified “language support” as a category of its own. In the wrap-up press conference at Nagoya Port, OCA officials noted that 60,000 people were at the heart of the event each day, including 17,000 athletes, coaches and team officials, 7,000 media representatives, 5,000 technical officials and 30,000 volunteers. Keeping such a crowd communicating across languages was never going to be a matter of one or two interpreters at a welcome desk.
Language volunteers do rather more than relay messages
The public role description asked language volunteers to offer foreign-language communication for athletes, media and overseas VIPs. On the ground, the work proved broader. Japanese media reported on Suzuki Yuna, a third-year student at Hosei University assigned to the rhythmic gymnastics venue. Her day ran from passing instructions between coaches and athletes to accompanying people to hospital, and she also escorted a Kazakhstan athlete around Nagoya Castle. Before the Games, on top of the joint training sessions, she worked through the competition rulebook herself and trained her listening on audio platforms.
The gap in the rarer languages is plainer than expected
Japanese and English were the working languages of the event, but with delegations from across the continent, Korean, Russian, Arabic and Mongolian could be required at any moment. The commercial market in China looks much the same. Clients approach our Shenzhen translation company for Japanese interpreting and Korean liaison on a weekly basis; during the trade-fair season, or when foreign-owned factories arrange supplier audits, a capable interpreter in one of the rarer languages may need to be reserved a week or two in advance. “Language services” sounds like a grand phrase; reduced to a single booking, it often comes down to one question: can anyone be on site tomorrow afternoon? “Have headset, will travel” is not quite how the market operates, as anyone who has tried to book a Mongolian interpreter on the morning of a meeting will know.
A growth market, and one that rewards preparation
The OCA also reported that income from marketing, sponsorship and television rights had risen by 19 per cent compared with Hangzhou in 2022, a sign of how much commercial value the Asian market now carries. That value runs on communication. International conferences, dealer meetings and product launches across the region require conference interpreting at a professional level; contracts, tenders and technical documentation require precise written translation; and documents used for immigration, study or registration often need certified translation with an official stamp. Businesses that leave the language element to the last moment are taking a risk with the very growth these figures describe.
When the competition ends, the demand will not leave with it
Two further dates are worth marking. The Asian Para Games open on 18 October, where accessible communication and medical interpreting will be held to a still higher standard. In 2030 the Asian Games move to Doha, and demand for Arabic and for the wider Middle Eastern market looks set to keep strengthening. On a larger canvas, as manufacturing shifts towards South-East Asia, and as cross-border e-commerce and overseas exhibitions multiply, multilingual services are changing from an agreeable extra into a routine line in the corporate budget.
For a translation company, the Nagoya Games read as a reminder: the real competition in language capability has moved on from “speaking English” to understanding the setting, knowing the terminology and having suitable people available when they are needed. How that lesson lands in our own work is the subject of the companion piece, “Four Practical Lessons on Translation, Learned from the Language Service at the Nagoya Asian Games”. Newcomers hoping to move into sports-event interpreting may prefer “She Interpreted at the Asian Games at 20: a Skill Checklist for Sports-event Interpreters”. Both follow the same story through different eyes, and together they set out what the Games looked like from the language side of the stadium.