On the field of play, almost never; in the room where the next host city is decided, always. Guided by a well-placed source, we walk through the exact moments when a major sporting event needs an interpreter—and who has to provide one.
As you read this, football fans around the world are nursing the hangover of the just-concluded 2026 FIFA World Cup. Forty-eight national teams gathered across three host countries: picture the cultural and linguistic exchange that unfolded, over more than a month, in press rooms, stands, restaurants, bars, locker rooms and on the pitch. It may only be rivaled by the Olympic Games—the largest and most polyglot sporting event in history.
Languages mediate between athletes, of course; but also between delegations, journalists, doctors and officials whose negotiations sometimes end in multimillion-dollar deals. Yet not all of those multilingual interactions are handled the same way: as we argued in our previous article on artificial intelligence and interpretation, here the machine still falls short—precision, culture and live poise remain the domain of the human interpreter.
To understand when an interpreter is needed at a sporting event on the scale of the Olympics, the FIFA World Cup or the Pan American Games, you have to climb the ladder of communication needs from the bottom up. We climbed it with Catalina Chica, a Colombian sports-medicine physician who has accompanied her country’s delegations to international tournaments. Here is what she told us.
1. On the field of play: almost never
The lowest rung is, curiously, the sport itself. On the pitch, on the mat, in the pool, an interpreter is almost never needed. “Athletes speak the international language of their sport,” Catalina explains. “Someone says ‘offside’ and every footballer understands it; in Spanish we say ‘fuerade lugar,’ but it’s the same thing. And it goes for every sport: the rules and the key terms of play are universal.”
Add to that the fact that, in certain disciplines, the elite know one another. “The people who reach a World Cup or an Olympics have spent years crossing paths with the same rivals since their youth tournaments. There’s already a way of communicating built on gestures, signals and survival English,” she adds.
That said: even though FIFA—for example—requires referees to speak English, the system isn’t foolproof. In the opening match of the 2026 World Cup, Brazilian referee Wilton Sampaio went viral when a South African player was visibly lost trying to understand a poorly communicated decision. On the pitch everything is resolved with gestures and English—not interpreters—but when that English fails, you feel it.
There’s a cultural nuance worth keeping in mind: every discipline has its reference language. “In the Olympic cycle, the first language is French, then English, then Russian,” the physician says. “And in combat sports, many of the key terms are Russian.”
2. The press conference: the classic case
This is where the work begins. The press conference is where the interpreter—almost always provided by the event’s organizer—stops being a luxury and becomes indispensable.
The mechanics run in two directions. On one side is the athlete who doesn’t speak the common language and gets a question in English or French: someone has to render it into their language in real time. “They give the athlete an interpreter to translate the questions into their language, and so that dozens of journalists from different countries can then follow each answer,” says Catalina Chica.
This is high-precision work: an error replicates instantly before millions of people. At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, an interpretation error at a press conference led Korean fans to believe their coach, Paulo Bento, had announced that two players would sit out. That wasn’t exactly what he had said. The result: a formal complaint to FIFA. And there’s another anecdote in the opposite direction: a young José Mourinho earned the nickname “The Translator” interpreting for coach Bobby Robson before becoming a legend himself.
3. To the public: the voice-over
There’s a third layer the viewer experiences without noticing: translation for the broadcast. The athlete answers in their language and the network layers a voice-over for its local audience. Often several levels are chained together—the interpreter in the room or booth, the translation into English for the international press, the network’s voice-over—without any of it showing on screen. For a television production company, this layer is as critical as lighting or sound.
4. Press delegations: with their own interpreter
Sometimes, the interpreters you see around the athletes aren’t brought to the event by the sporting delegation, but by the press delegation of the respective nation. That is: a major media outlet, or a press group from a specific country, travels with its own simultaneous interpreter so as not to depend on whatever chain of translations is offered on site. When a team anticipates facing an uncommon language or a high volume of information, it hires its own interpretation to reinforce the organizer’s. The sporting delegation, on the other hand, rarely travels with its own interpreter for the athletes—whether because it trusts that the event’s central organizer will “provide” one, or because it lacks the budget to do so. “Athletes and their coaches are never given an interpreter,” the doctor confirms. “Very rarely does a sporting delegation travel with its own.”
5. The medical area and doping control
This rung is subtler, and perhaps that’s why some organizers underestimate it. Almost all top-level doctors speak English, Chica says, and every “serious” delegation travels with its own. “The injured athlete generally finds that their doctor smooths the communication,” the sports physician says. “But every so often a doctor arrives who doesn’t speak English, and then you do have to bring in an interpreter—imagine the dangers if that isn’t done.”
That’s why the smart organizer doesn’t station a fixed interpreter in the medical area, but instead keeps interpreters “on call” available for the whole event: “Sometimes the event hires a few interpreters to be available in general, in case they’re needed here and there. They’re called in when a language comes up that no one else covers.”
There’s a context where this goes from advisable to mandatory: doping control. The World Anti-Doping Agency’s rules expressly recognize the athlete’s right to request an interpreter during the testing process. In a procedure where a misunderstanding can end in a years-long ban, exact communication isn’t a courtesy: it’s a safeguard. An organizer who doesn’t plan for it is exposed to a serious problem.
6. The leadership level: always
At the top of the ladder—let’s face it—sits the political and economic leadership of the sport, for whom the interpreter is never missing. There are two distinct reasons for this.
The first is protocol. Federation presidents are treated as VIPs: meals, tours, social events. That courtesy is usually provided by the local host, and sometimes covers the entire delegation. The physician experienced it at a world championship in Uzbekistan: “The local federation assigned an interpreter to each delegation. The president went everywhere with the interpreter, especially to the meetings among federation presidents.” Her delegation took advantage of that same professional to get to know the city and understand the people of a local market; but the underlying purpose was another.
That purpose is the second reason, the weightiest one: governance. At these events, taking advantage of the fact that every country is represented, the leaders meet behind closed doors to make decisions that change the sport. “The federation presidents negotiate: they represent their country’s interests,” she explains. “The Olympics are like a United Nations, but for sport.” What do they negotiate? “They decide where the next event will be, who finances it, whether they’ll have to put up money or not, or a rule change. And also the political side: whom to back for the next term in a presidency, for example.”
For all that, this is where simultaneous interpretation—with booth and receivers—becomes critical. And it’s no coincidence that the major bodies mandate it by statute. The FIFA Congress operates with qualified interpreters in seven languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Arabic and Portuguese), and its rules allow a delegate to speak in their mother tongue as long as they ensure interpretation into an official language. The International Olympic Committee, for its part, requires under Rule 23 of the Olympic Charter simultaneous interpretation into French and English at all its sessions—and in case of discrepancy, the French text prevails. When a host city, a budget or a rule is at stake, no one risks a misunderstanding.
The takeaway for whoever produces the event
Planning interpretation for a major sporting event isn’t hiring “a few translators just in case.” It’s mapping scenarios: how many booths, for which languages, in which rooms, with which on-call interpreters and for which delegations. It’s understanding that French rules the Olympic cycle, that Russian dominates in combat sports, and that an error at a press conference goes viral in seconds.
In a world rushing to subtitle everything with artificial intelligence, the major sporting event keeps proving the opposite: when there’s a host city at stake, an injury to treat or a career that can be sanctioned, communication cannot fail. And for it not to fail, you still need a person.
