The Linguist

@Linguist_CIOL OCTOBER/NOVEMBER The Linguist 19 FEATURES to host both the summer and the winter event. Between the two Beijing Games, China has been transforming from a modernising country seeking international recognition to the most powerful developing country, striving for a greater voice in global governance. As China plays an increasingly important role in the global economy and global affairs, its foreign language ideology is gradually moving away from English-centric multilingualism to national language capacity-oriented multilingualism. Towards a multilingual approach In China's conceptualisation of national language capacity, foreign languages are seen as one of the indispensable resources in the process of national development, a component of national core competitiveness and an important embodiment of national soft power. However, although China has a huge language-learning population, it has limited foreign language resources. Beijing was short of advanced English speakers, multilingual speakers and speakers of foreign languages other than English during the 2008 Olympics. A favourable language environment for the Games needs to accommodate the linguistic diversity that characterises the local and global context of an Olympic host city (and country). As Ingrid Piller notes, English monolingual ways of seeing multilingualism are a great limitation to the building of national language capacity. 1 Since Beijing 2008, the Chinese government has issued many language policies to strengthen the education of less commonly taught languages. The types of foreign language programmes in higher education have increased from 44 to 101. In addition, technological progress has been made. Advancements in computer- aided translation (CAT), machine translation (MT) and internet-based language service platforms are reshaping the development model of China's language service industry. These innovations will play an increasingly important role during the Winter Olympics. Maintaining linguistic diversity while ensuring the efficiency of communication is one of the biggest language challenges facing the world today. We are gradually entering the age of artificial intelligence. Recent years have witnessed the exponential development of neural MT and multilingual human- machine interaction technologies. In the future, language technologies will provide the possibility of intercultural communication in native languages. Given the significance and pace of these developments, policymakers need to position themselves on the front line and guide the direction of language policy and planning. The 2022 Winter Olympics will spur on Beijing's commitment to technological advancement in language services. A far-reaching, innovative and comprehensive response to the language challenges posed by this changing environment is a requirement for the development of a modern society in the 21st century. Hopefully, China's Olympic language services will provide some valuable solutions. Jie Zhang's Language Policy and Planning for the Modern Olympic Games (2021) is published by De Gruyter Mouton. Notes 1 Piller, I (2016) 'Monolingual Ways of Seeing Multilingualism'. In Journal of Multicultural Discourse, 11(1), 25-33 OVERCOMING HURDLES The women's 110m hurdles race at Beijing 2008, where Olympic language policy advanced Olympics and its legacy for future Games OLYMPIC EFFORTS © SHUTTERSTOCK

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