Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services

Whitehorse (Mar 20/00) - Bringing athletes together from around the circumpolar world means dealing with seven mother tongues: Greenlandic, Inuktitut, Danish, Russian, Southern Tutchone, French. And though English can be somewhat of a universal language, not everyone speaks it.

"The written stuff needed to be translated and all the interpreters needed to be organized," said chair of language service Marie-Louise Boylan, whose volunteer job involved looking after all the Games' translation needs.

"That included finding and bringing up the volunteers from down south, and finding as many local translators as we could."

And how far and wide did the Games 2000 have to look?

"We sort of zeroed in on Edmonton, but people did come from far and wide," laughed Boylan.

"We had one translator who was living in Maine, who's from Greenland. And he made his way to Montreal and then came up. And then also a couple of Russians who were living in Montreal, who had heard about the games and flew up here. They were actually Russian. They'd been living in the States and living in Montreal about a year."

The host society, with the help of First Air, brought up 23 translators, then housed them, paid them a per diem, and fed them.

There were also seven Whitehorse residents involved with language services.

Boylan explained that the volunteers were responsible for interpreting the Games for the team assigned them. The translators arrived a day before the teams arrived, to acquaint themselves with their new surroundings.

"Basically, they stuck very close to the coach during competitions. They would interpret for the coach and if the coach had a problem, a protest or an issue, they would be in there with the officials. And after the games they would stick closely with the team and do all kinds of stuff with them."

Boylan said that for some teams, the translators were indispensable.

"Some of the teams spoke no English at all," she said.

Navarana Beveridge of Repulse Bay speaks Danish, Greenlandic (Greenland's two languages) and Inuktitut. She spent a lot of time with a Greenlandic team, including cultural delegates such as NAIP, a youth folk dance troupe who demonstrated traditional Danish folk dances. They spoke no English.

Beveridge, who moved to Repulse Bay from Greenland to be with her husband, explains that most people between the age of 14 and 30 speak English. It's those outside that age group that needed her language skills.

Asked if she translated Greenlandic or Danish most, she says, "Greenlandic all the way."

"It's a different dialect than Inuktitut," she explains. "The origin of the words are the same, very similar. If you speak slowly and use sign language, you can understand each other."

Beveridge would get up at 7 a.m. to catch a bus to Yukon College, where the arctic sports took place, and after a 9 a.m. meeting, the games started.

"The competition would start at 10 a.m and went on until 10 or 11 at night. There was no time to see other sports. I had three cousins from Greenland who were there, but I didn't have time to see them. I got pretty attached to my team. It was a lot of work, but satisfying," Beveridge said.

For this translator, it was evident that the athletes gathered from nine Northern regions had the opportunity to satisfy their curiosity about each other, their languages and their cultures.

Yellowknifer and Danish-speaker Lone Sorenson first became involved as a translator with the Arctic Winter Games in Yellowknife in 1990, the first year Greenland sent a team.

"That was pretty awesome. It was really like deja vu, sitting around with a bunch of people that spoke my language in Yellowknife," says Sorenson, whose own English became more accented as these games went on.

"It's from speaking so much Danish," she said.

Sorenson, who was responsible for a Greenlandic volleyball team, explained that her role was very much a supporting one. Wherever she was needed, she stepped in.

"This time, we were given a very good orientation. We were given a tour of Whitehorse so we could assist the teams in knowing where things were. We were the first people to welcome them -- they would naturally ask us questions. We were given a list of where the Greenlandic teams were going to, training schedules, bus schedules. And we were there with the team when they were playing."

Sorenson said she enjoyed following the teams, but she also enjoyed reconnecting with people she'd met at previous Games.