This autumn we have lots of news and activity around sports. As in every international endeavor, translation for communication across boundaries is important for sports. We will spend a moment here to expand on the topic to describe the deep and intrinsic relationship that we at MotaWord see between these two topics.
A personal story of our COO - JK explains it best:
"As a young child, my Grandmother--an all-American athlete (biking) and coach (volleyball) herself--had a set of commemorative plates that she had collected from the Olympic Games over several years of attending them in the USA and beyond. Americans travel extensively within our own borders, but those are so vast that many don’t ever reach the edges and go beyond, especially before the days of discount airfare. And so there was a plate, commemorating a giant and world-renowned event for which people came from all over the world, to join each other in friendly competition in one place, once every 4 years (back then the Summer and Winter games were held on the same year). And not just any people, the very top echelon of athletes. Growing up in a family in which sports were taken seriously, as something meaningful and something to be proud of excelling at, these stories and memories of my grandmother’s travels to the Olympics grounded sports in an international context. A place where all people could come together, whatever other troubles the world was facing just then. We are proud to be incubated by the French Tech Ticket in Paris, and we have been thrilled to be there as the bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics turned from a bid into a plan. We have learned the international sign language for the Eiffel Tower, which has become the symbol of the Paris2024 “JO” games."
And as MotaWord, we are thrilled to be in the midst of the excitement as one culture prepares to host the rest of the world in this way -- a merit-based, clean, and honest determining of the most skilled athletes in the world. We are working with the city government and the Olympic committee to find the ways that we can contribute to this event. Our overlaps in tech (one principle of the Paris2024 games) and tech4good (another core principle) have led us into some highly compelling conversations as to how we can support both the language translation of the games and simultaneously the sustainable business practices that they embrace.
Perhaps with this, a complete description of the link between the interaction between cultures that are represented by the Olympics, and the interaction between cultures that are represented by translation, our other sporting news makes more sense.
We have sponsored a soccer team in the Netherlands! Soccer (or, sure, football) is another international coming together -- every 2 years in Europe or the world. The best and brightest compete for who can run harder, work smarter, and simply have the courage and stamina that it takes to win. We support our team(!) and moreover we support all of the players working on becoming the best at this international echelon of athletics.
We have supported the US Open! We are avidly interested in tennis, with many of the top players coming from countries where we have a branch or a distinct interest. We got a live-action view earlier with the US Open, not far from the MotaWord HQ in NYC.
At MotaWord, we are deeply connected to international sports, in the same way that we are passionate about language translation. These are ways that we as humans transcend barriers and communicate with each other, person to person.
