Sounds of Olympic venues

One of the most perplexing language issues at the Olympic games is how to translate the all-purpose Chinese cheer, “加油!” (jiayou!), into English (or any other language).

加 means to “add.” 油 means “oil” or “fuel.” (And technically gas stations are often called 加油站, or jiayou stops). But it’s almost never chanted in the context of a gas station. Instead, you’ll hear it often chanted at these Olympic games when the audience wants the competitors to dig deep and put in an extra effort. Here is a YouTube video explaining how to chant 加油 to go with the official Olympic civilized chant hand gestures).

But around the Web you can find a variety of struggles as the Chinese try to translate this all-purpose cheer into English. (On some chat boards it even makes it into the category of most frequently asked translations.)

Most annoying, part II

The loud music being played between points even when the gap was only a few seconds and sometimes continuing even when the players were ready to serve. Interestingly, the vast majority of clips, covering five or six decades and innumerable genres, were English-language songs - one world, one language. Here are our picks for top five clips during our last hour at the matches:

• Billy Squire - The Stroke
• ELO - Don’t Bring Me Down
• Kiss - I Was Made for Loving You
• Blink 182 - All the Small Things
• House of Pain - Jump Around