PROVO, Utah — Minutes before a national television crew from Japan was to conduct an interview Jan. 10 detailing BYU's vast language skills, the Japanese-speaking student who had been lined up for the interview had to leave.
Julie Walker of BYU's University Communications asked a random student walking through BYU's Museum of Art, where the interview had been scheduled, if he spoke Japanese.
He did.
Soon the student was communicating in Japanese on camera, illustrating in perfect form the great language resource available at BYU.
Bill Eggington, a BYU professor of linguistics who has evaluated language services during three Olympic games, avers that the incident could have happened anywhere. He adds, however, that the chance of it happening at BYU is far greater than at anywhere else.
Nearly three-fourths of BYU's 30,000 students speak a language other than English, more than 60 languages in all.
This comes in part as a natural consequence of the Church's missionary program; more than 80 percent of the men and 13 percent of the women at BYU have served missions.
However, regular classes at BYU are offered in 43 languages, with an additional 33 available with sufficient student interest — among the most anywhere in the country. And about 25 percent of BYU's student body are enrolled in a language course at any one time, compared to the national average of 8 percent.
"There isn't another place in the world where you would have so much multilingual capability, with such a wide rage of languages, where English is the base language," said Brother Eggington.
For example, BYU has more students enrolled in Russian classes than any other American university, according to the most recent survey by the Modern Language Association. Also unique for an American university is the fact that more than half of those students are enrolled in upper division classes. And BYU graduates 45 to 50 Russian majors per year, more than twice as many as other universities.
James Hales, who served in the Russia St. Petersburg Mission from 1996 to 1998, said he hasn't taken one class at BYU in which there wasn't at least one other Russian speaker. In addition, as a teacher supervisor at the Church's adjacent Missionary Training Center, he works with BYU students who speak Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Ukrainian and Armenian.
"We think it is a remarkable thing," said Brother Eggington. "We need to think of it as a natural resource, as a natural consequence of the missionary effort, and tell the world about it. A lasting impact of the Olympics is the world coming to a recognition that northern Utah has this multilingual capability."
About one-fifth of the official interpreters and hosts for foreign dignitaries, athletes and coaches during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games will be BYU students and faculty.
Steve Clark, director of staffing for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, said that many of the almost 2,000 Olympic volunteers and game-time employees from BYU have jobs that require a foreign language. For example 41 BYU students will be working in international client services, 34 as language specialists and 168 with the national Olympic committees and athlete services.
Regardless of the volunteer position, languages are important to be able to welcome the world, he said. Having such a strong presence of foreign language speakers, he added, is "absolutely something we are really proud of. Salt Lake will exceed expectation for our foreign visitors because so many of them will be able to communicate in their own language."
Other BYU students will participate in an emergency interpretation service BYU will offer to emergency response personnel — such as police and paramedics — during the Olympics.
Shannon LaVine, a former project manager for the Utah Olympic Public Safety Command, contacted BYU last year asking for help with translation. A BYU graduate and former missionary to Norway, she wanted to tap into BYU's vast language resource.
Wayne Mortensen, a returned missionary to Hungary volunteered for the service "out of an interest for the Hungarian people."
During the games he will be on call, with either a cell phone or at home, to translate Hungarian for emergency personnel working outside of Olympic venues. "I can be someone they call to make sure a little child finds its parents or adults get the help they need," he said.
Julie Walker has been busy the past several weeks working with foreign journalists. Reporters, from all over the world — such Austrian National TV, Swiss Television, Finnish TV, MTV Russia and the Canadian Broadcast Company, to name a few — have visited the BYU campus and interviewed students in their own tongues.
Danny Woffinden, the randomly located student who spoke to the Japanese television crew Jan. 10, recalled that the Japanese reporters —skeptical of an American student's Japanese skills — had a translator available for the interview. They were impressed when the interview could be conducted entirely in Japanese, he said.
Ironically, the interview could have also been conducted in Portuguese — a third language he speaks fluently.
He lived in Japan from 1999 to 2001 while serving as a missionary and Brazil from 1999 to 2001 while his father served as a mission president. He recently declared his major as linguistics with a Portuguese minor. BYU, he said, is the perfect place to study language.
During his interview with the Japanese reporters he talked about the Church university, his mission experience and the Olympics. He will serve as an Olympic volunteer. "I told them that BYU students have a special skill for languages and that we would be willing to help in anyway we could."
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