A Major shakeup in Baseball and how translations has helped
Big news coming from the world of sport today involving one of America’s favourite pastimes baseball. All 30 teams of the Major League Baseball (MLB) are now being required to employ an all year round full time translator for their players from Latin American countries. This new proposal has been championed by current New York Yankees player Carlos Beltran, who himself hails from Puerto Rico wanted to see the implementation of these translation fast!
The translation and interpreters will be partially supplemented by the MLB with $65,000 given to each team to help with costs. The money will come from the penalties incurred by the teams that had preceded the international signing bonus limit, according to documents acquired by The New York Times and ESPN.
It comes after an incident which took place in April 2014 when Beltran’s teammate, New York Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda’s game was cut short as he was ejected for having pine tar on his neck as it helps the pitcher manipulate the flight of the ball. Once the game was over Pineda was grilled by the press but due to his limited English he was not able to communicate properly. Beltran was unhappy with this event, as he said at the time “It’s a problem, of course, because he can’t express himself the way he wants to.”
Pineda (Left) and Beltran (Right)
Beltran had pushed and with the aid of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) the new policy has been introduced by the MLB.
Translators and interpreters have long been offered by MLB to Japanese and Asian players but has not been the same for the Latin American Spanish speaking players who make up nearly 25 percent of the MLB roster. It makes sense for these services to be offered pre and post games to help the Spanish speaking players communicate with the press as there are far more from Hispanics than there are Asians in the league.
“I am very happy about this, this is MLB we have a large Spanish-speaking contingent of players and coaches, and we need to be as professional as possible in everything we do.” Beltran told the Times after the decision had been agreed.
What are your thoughts on this?
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/sports/2016/01/14/no-longer-lost-in-translation-mlb-now-requires-translators-for-latino/
