Soccer Writers In Need Of A Crash Course In Foreign Languages

Why do Italians call Bozhinov "Bojinov" and VFB Stuttgart "Stoccarda"?

Ozren Podnar

The biggest Italian transfer in the January market was that of the Bulgarian Valeri Bozhinov.

Fiorentina paid Lecce $13 million for the youngster, who turned 19 on February 15th and is considered one of the world's greatest footballing prospects.

Having made his debut at 15 years and 11 months, he is now playing his fourth season as a pro. Is there a problem with Bozhinov? Yes, there is.

In spite of his being a celebrity in Italy, the Italian press continuously misspell his second name: they call him "Bojinov".

According to the Italian orthography, a name spelled like that should be pronounced /boYEEnov/. That's not Valeri's name, however.

In fact, it sounds like /boZHEEnov/, "zh" being the sound represented in English by "su" in words like pleasure, treasure, measure or leisure.

The Bulgarian language uses cyrillic characters, and the rule of thumb is: in order to represent words originally written in non-latin scripts, transcribe them phonetically, with characters available in the target language. Thus the legendary Bulgarian Hristo is known as Stoichkov in English, but as Stoitchkov in French or Stoitschkow in German.

The "Bojinov" variant works well in France or Portugal, but not in English, and not at all in Italy or Germany, where the letter "j" always sounds like the English /y/, or in Spain, where "j" represents the sound /h/.

Still, the misspelling "Bojinov" has taken root and there is not a force in the world capable of setting it right. Of course, most journalists or fans do not know the correct pronunciation of Valeri's surname, either. They call the youngster all sort of things, usually applying the orthographic rules prevailing in their language, which differ greatly from one European language to the next, and from the original name.

This particular case of media illiteracy is upsetting to all those who believe that soccer is too important to be taken lightly. And this case is not alone. You can be the scorer of the winning goal in a European Championship finals, and still have your name misspelled and mispronounced in many international programs.

The Greek divinity, Angelos Haristeas, pronounced /hurrySTAYus/, is usually spelled "Charisteas", which in turn induces some ill-informed commentators to call him, well, Charisteas. With an initial "ch" like in Charlton.

Meet Hristo "Estoykov"

Stoichkov himself knows what it's like not to recognize your own name when pronounced by foreign commentators. A huge idol in Spain during his 6 and a half year spell in Barcelona's Dream Team, he was most often called /EstoyKOV/, three mistakes away from the correct pronunciation.

Incidentally, the late Hungarian goal-scoring hero from the 1954 World Cup, Sandor Kocsis, was in his Barca days verbally treated as if he was called Koksis, instead of the correct Kochish; the Danish international Henning Jensen was turned into Hensen while playing in Real Madrid, and the Romanian coach Stefan Kovacs (an ethnic Hungarian), the inventor of "total football" with Ajax, couldn't help being called Kovaks instead of Kovach.

International fame did not help any of these poor souls. But, if a player or even a coach's career is too short for the reporters or fans to pick up the right names, what about clubs?

Well, if you travel to certain European countries, you may not recognize your club is being discussed in the press or on TV even if you are the club's chairman yourself.

If you live in Germany, you will have a hard time finding out how AC Milan fared in a recent Serie A match day. Your best guess will be to look under "M": it cannot be other than...Mailand!? How dare the Germans distort a registered trademark as Milan (or any other club's name) by translating it? AS Roma for them is, naturally, Rom. Genoa is Genua. Once majestic Maradona's Napoli may now be languishing in the third division, but it certainly does not deserve to be called Neapel.

These darned Germans, you may think. But the Italians are no better, for sure. Ever heard of Stoccarda? No? You should have, since the famed Matthias Sammer is their current coach. Then it must be Stuttgart, right? But the Italians automatically convert the names identical to cities into the Italian names for cities themselves! What a shame, what a breach of linguistic and cultural norms!

Mailand mayhem

The Spaniards are equally indifferent to linguistic correctness. Nápoles, they say for Napoli; Oporto for Porto; Wolfsburgo for Wolfsburg; Hamburgo for Hamburger SV (in Italy it's worse, it's - Amburgo). Some cases are even humorous. The Belgian Club Brugge in Spanish usage is Brujas, which literally means Witches!

Incidentally, Brugge in Flemish means "bridge", which refers to the old Roman bridge across the Reie river. But the Spanish press never seems to tire of writing about a "caza de Brujas" (a Witch-hunt) whenever their club is drawn to play against the Flemish side. What a tremendous joke it must be for the readers.

The most ridiculous cases occur when there are more than one club per city, one called after a city itself, the other called differently. In Antwerp there are Royal Antwerp and GBA (Germinal-Beerschoot-Antwerp), but the Portuguese press calls both sides Antuérpia, possibly without knowing that there are two clubs they refer to with the same misnomer!

Such abominable practice should be red carded and the media penalized for such blatant disrespect for international institutions. A name of a club should be treated equally as a name of any company. If a car manufacturer is called Volkswagen, then it's not called "People's Vehicle", and if a club is called Stuttgart, then Stuttgart it must be in any language of the world.

English speakers are guilty, too, albeit to a lesser degree. IFK Gothenburg, for IFK Göteborg, Cologne for Köln and Nuremberg for Nürnberg are common examples of unfair treatment of Germanic team names. Turin is sometimes heard where Torino should be, but Roma, Napoli or Venezia are all exempted from this linguistic isolationism. Milan and Genoa are, of course, original English names, homage to the inventors of the game, who exported football to Italy in late 19th century.

One habit of some English reporters, however, is irritating: saying Moscow Spartak and Moscow Dynamo is both wrong and incongruous. Interestingly and peculiarly, this inversion is reserved just for these two Russian teams, not for "Bucharest Dinamo" and "Prague Sparta". And not for Madrid Real nor Munich Bayern, luckily for them.

Ozren Podnar

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Discover how clubs' names "translate" into different languages. Only the "translations" are given. Where the club is named correctly, a blank space is left. Under "real name", common abbreviations are given instead of official full names (Köln for FC Köln, Milan for AC Milan etc.)

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