NEW this month from the University of Nebraska Press is The Global Game: Writers on Soccer edited by John Turnbull, Thom Satterlee, and Alon Raab

"Translating the Global Game"
by John Turnbull

One would have good reason for believing that The Global Game: Writers on Soccer is about soccer. The word “soccer” appears in the title. The cover features a soccer player in Lichinga, Mozambique, competing in a Saturday morning match. From the first entry in the book, by Danish poet Klaus Rifbjerg, to the last, by Czech writer Miroslav Holub, poems, essays, memoir, letters, and oratory discuss “association football,” the formal name for a ball game codified in London in 1863 and shortened to “socca’,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, sometime in the 1880s.

But for the past three years, encompassing compilation and editorial duties shared with Thom Satterlee and Alon Raab, I have come to think of the collection primarily as a work concerning translation. The book translates from languages such as Slovenian, Farsi, and Danish (as well as French, Spanish, Portuguese, and numerous others), but, most important, it translates cultural practice from regions that regard soccer as a constituent element of everyday life.

One example of simultaneous translation of words and ritual occurs in the title of chapter 12, “Get Him a Body Bag!” by an Argentine scholar of popular culture, María Graciela Rodríguez. The Spanish words, shouted menacingly toward an injured player at a 1996 match in Buenos Aires, are ¡Tapalo con los diarios! The words literally mean, “Cover him with newspapers.” A three-way exchange among myself, Rodríguez, and translator Miranda Stramel sorted out the strange idiom.

In North America, the expression lacks cultural referent. In Argentina, however, the phrase dates to the “dirty war” between 1976 and 1983, when victims of the military junta indeed were covered with daily newspapers – los diarios – as the bodies lay on the street. The fan refers to the prostrate soccer player as if he were an “unknown corpse,” Rodríguez writes in an e-mail in 2006. “It’s as if you said: ‘He’s dead anyway, let’s cover him with an old newspaper and move on. End of story.’ ”

In opting for a similarly cruel, while admittedly less specific, alternative, “Get him a body bag,” we draw a dynamic parallel to sporting arenas in North America. I have heard the phrase several times, mainly at American football games, but I never thought twice about the chilling implications. In my mind I have returned often, though, to this shout from the terraces of Estadio Monumental in the Argentine capital. The words speak to the passion of supporters across the globe but also to a history – often one of death and domination – to which soccer has become attached.

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Buy The Global Game: Writers on Soccer

For additional resources and interviews visit http://writers.theglobalgame.com.