Sports Translation in the Community

Drawing on an ethnographic methodology, this article explores community settings to understand the interaction between sport, multilingualism and translation in local, non-professional contexts. It reports on observations of sports sites and interviews with organisers, coaches, volunteers, and players across a variety of disciplines, conducted in Galway (Republic of Ireland) and Belfast (Northern Ireland, UK), as part of a North-South research project Multilingual Island: Sites of Translation and Encounter in 2023–2025. This work contributes to existing research on sports translation – and in translation in general – by identifying and discussing three different types of translation present in community settings (translation by volunteers, translation with the body, and the use of translation technologies), and by illustrating how these modes of translational engagement enable individuals and groups to participate in sporting activities and overcome language barriers. The article argues for the importance of the study of settings such as amateur, community sports sites for understandings of ad hoc, non-professional translation activities. It concludes that the types of translation that occur in these sports settings have enabling functions which allow sports organisations and groups to cater for diverse communities, and migrants to become involved in sporting activities which afford them a sense of inclusion and agency.