Twenty years ago, the Sydney Olympic Games brought the world together. But with 11,000 international athletes descending on Australia came the unique challenge of communicating in hundreds of different languages.
There were also more than 1,400 volunteer interpreters representing about 50 different languages - known as bilingual assistants - who were recruited to help the international athletes get around Sydney during the Games.
Professional Arabic interpreter Steve Karakira described the atmosphere as “electrifying”. The now 70-year-old had almost a decade to prepare for his role at the Games after being contracted to translate Sydney’s Olympic bid.“[But] no knowledge, no information that I had before the Games, prepared me for what I saw on the day,” he said. “The atmosphere was just fantastic, it was buzzing with life, it was electrifying. Words can not really describe what I saw.
“I felt I was just a very small part of a big machinery all working together to provide the best,” he said.
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