Part 2 - LA84 Foundation

19. Olympic Village
19.8
Delegation Services
Assignment of Language Service Personnel by Region
Classification
Asia
West Europe & North America
Africa
Arabic Regions
Central and South America
East Europe
Grand Total
552
Service Personnel
for
Support Staff
27
18
30
20
25
17
137
The Olympic Village Headquarters
provided interpreter guides, office
space, material and administrative
aids to delegations from 160 countries.
The SLOOC provided speedy information
and guidance service for delegations
to make way for smooth village
operation and active attendance at
competitions, practice fields and
official ceremonies.
The human resources supply for
delegation services included 792 people
— 41 administrate members and
751 interpreters. They served under
the NOC Service Manager as service
center officers and as continent
officers for six different areas — Asia,
Western Europe, Eastern Europe,
the Middle East, Africa, and Central
and south America.
19.8.1
Delegation Office and Logistic
Support
—————————————–
Delegation offices were assigned to
160 countries for a total of 179 units.
The offices were assigned according
to the size of the delegation. The
offices were apartments similar to the
shape of living quarters, with one unit
given to a delegation with less than
300 members, two units for a delegation
between 301-600, and three units
for a delegation with more than 601.
The offices consisted of five rooms —
chef de mission room, secretariat
room, conference room, doctor's
room, and a massage room. The chef
de mission room maintained close
information exchange with delegation
service center and handled delegation
management affairs. The secretariat
room was for the assistant chef de
mission and officials who handled
affairs related to participation and
transportation to competition venues,
training sites and official ceremonies.
Doctor's room staff determined standards
on required space and equipment
according to IOC Medical Commission
rules. Massage room was for
sports medicine and massage
services.
The delegation office was situated
either on the second floor or the lowest
floor of the dwelling building for easy
contact with national team members. If
the delegation was allotted two offices,
one was used as administrative unit
Service Personnel
for
National Team Leaders
33
18
35
21
35
17
159
and the other for medical unit, and if
three offices were allotted, one was
reserved as administrative unit,
another for conference, and the third
for medical unit. A flag pole was
installed inside the Chef de Mission
room for hoisting a national flag, and
interiors of the rooms were reshaped
upon request from NOC.
Materials distribution of 28 articles to
the offices were carried out between
July and August 1988 according to the
guidelines.
19.8.2
Language Service
—————————————–
Of all the delegation service, language
services was the broadest. Of total
manpower of 792, the administrative
personnel were only 41 and the rest
751 were all interpreters. The number
of interpreters per NOC was determined
in proportion to the size of the
delegation. Assignment of interpreters
was one for each chef de mission, one
for each ball game team and one for
every 25 athletes/officials.
The SLOOC established a field training
plan for interpreters in April 1988
and prepared a 165-page operations
manual in June. For 20 days from July
2, training was implemented.
The training program was designed to
emphasize the significance of interpreters'
tasks and proper mental
attitude. Training in both circumstantial
and functional aspects, and field training
such as village guide, venue guide
and airport guide services were carried
out. In order to become familiar
with characteristics of each country,
handbook instruction, audio-visual
education using culture videos, and
lectures were given by professors from
the Institute of Foreign Affairs &
National Security. Korean foreign resident
personnel who had no difficulties
in linguistic aspects were trained twice
in August on details related to NOC
Service Center, Opening and Closing
Ceremonies, transportation and
gender verification.
Management system of interpreters
consisted of group leaders for each
NOC supervised by the six continent
officers. Interpreters for the chef de
mission, team interpreter, general
interpreter, transportation personnel
and materials distribution personnel
worked in a single group at each NOC
entry gate for each delegation. They
worked full time from September 1 to
October 5, starting one hour before the
athletes and officials were to leave the
Service Personnel
for
National Teams
21
32
10
3
17
26
109
General Service
Personnel
84
128
28
23
13
70
346
Total
165
196
103
67
90
130
751
village until one hour after the athletes
returned. The SLOOC provided village
accommodation for the entire Korean
foreign resident personnel, inter-city
residents and night-duty workers.
19.8.3
Service Center Operation
The officer in charge of the service
center executed extensive services
relating to general information center,
information desk, post office, video &
CATV room, tourist information, airline
information and NOC Service Center.
The job was well managed in spite of
the fact that there was a great deal of
difficulty in providing all the necessary
information gathered from the village,
venues and operation headquarters to
the administrative operation
personnel.
—————————————–
General information center,
information desk, information booth
Athletes and officials admitted to the
Administration Center were led to the
International Zone of the village after
going through certain entry procedures
and accreditation at the information
desk (33 square meters) with
the help of 20 women interpreters and
then through the information booth
(10 square meters) which was run by
eight interpreters. Athletes and
officials obtained all necessary information
from the general information
center (109 square meters), located on
the first floor of the Athletes' Hall in the
International Zone.
The general information center provided
guidance to various events,
transportation, Olympic program,
religion, WINS service, team doctor
registration, temporary license
acquirement, location of consulate
officers, money exchange rate, and
even jogging courses. It was operated
by 20 interpreters in 10 different
languages, but there were certain problems
with unfamilliar languages. The
total number of cases handled by the
general information center during the
Olympics was 3,672. Divided into
categories, they were 608 inquiries on
street guidance, 364 on tours, 433 on
events at the Olympic Village, 324 on
village programs, 294 on cultural
events, 197 on transportation, 157 on
public building guidance, 113 on
warm-up areas, 106 on accommodation,
94 on religious services, 78 on
village operation center and 528
others.
Problems developed while running the
information center because interpreters'
language capability and information
materials were insufficient except for
English, and the information center
could not fulfill its function of
administering all relevant data on
delegations.