Baseball

From the movie: “Field of dreams” (people will come)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SB16il97yw

Excerpt from movie:Illustrate the meaning of baseball for Americans.

YoutubesStudent 2-3 minutes of these youtubes of baseballhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFKDsFYj3E4• homerun – cardinal giants 2014 strike out• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yao10PCnkbM grand slam• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJyxzaLNlNw

curve ball• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I28o24u3UUk

Do foreign executives balk at sports jargon? USA Today, 3/2007

English may be the international language of

business, but foreign executives who are fluent in it find themselves at a loss unless they also master conversational horsehide and the vocabulary of other U.S. sports.

Major League Baseball begins Sunday.. Foreign-born executives … must know what it means to "make a pitch," and if they don't know what it takes to develop a "home-run" product, they had better know how to "manufacture runs" by "choking up" and "playing small ball in the late innings."

Business is so rife with the jargon that it makes foreigners wonder what Americans are smoking when they throw around baseball in a business context…

The list of sports jargon seems endless. …

There is plenty of golf played in Europe, but only Americans seem to speak it in a business context

Sanna says…The Japanese are said to be at a particular loss because they don't use sports analogies in their own language…

Nor is there a sports term that helps Europeans understand "manufacturing a run."

Stanek says Czechs enjoy sports such as soccer but never discuss it at the office. He says you're more likely to hear "home run" at a Czech business meeting because of the influence of American movies.

The Japanese would know what "all the bases covered" means in baseball, but they don't seem to be able to translate it into business

…It is a good thing there are baseball movies like The Natural and Field of Dreams

Sourcehttp://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/

workplace/2007-03-30-baseball-jargon_N.htm

Go to Workshop Sheet

North American-born students of the class and Yael guided the class in understanding some of the terms and translating the relevant sentences.

Student work was put on the board.Different strategies were discussed: • Similar meaning/similar form• Similar meaning/different form• Paraphrase

The terms discussed were “batting 1000”; “in the ballpark”, “curveball”, “play hardball”

ConclusionThe class concluded that the Wikipedia detailed

explanations of the concepts would not be enough to understand the meaning of the terms.

Small group discussion with the native speaker informants were crucial for beginning to understand the meaning of the terms.

To understand the cultural meanings of deeply embedded terms of a culture is very challenging and takes much work.