One of my favorite aspects of international sports events is the languages. At the Fifa Club World Cup in Abu Dhabi this year, we have teams made up of guys whose mother tongues are … Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Korean, Arabic, English and pidgin English. (Plus a smattering of Balkan languages.)

When I’m not trying to quote people for The National — where we prefer clarity and accuracy — I just like to hear everyone prattle on in whatever language they came with.

When it gets tricky?

When the translators are not quite up to the task.

That has happened more than once, here at the Club World Cup.

Earlier this week, TP Mazembe of the Congo came in for their introductory press conference. The coach and players probably speak an African language first, but they also all speak French, an official language handed down from the days when the Belgians ran the country.

I understand the translators in that room were under some stress. The one I was listening to needed to understand English and French, obviously, but also Arabic — to translate questions from the Arabic-speaking media.

I can’t vouch for her English or Arabic, but I know just enough French to know her translation was a disastre! And it made for some stilted and weird (and inaccurate) quotes, I imagine. I didn’t use those I knew to be a confused mess.

Another problem translators face? Even if they are proficient in the languages involved, they also need to understand the sport being talked about. If they don’t get the soccer terms, they come across as really weird stuff. Like a “goal” might be translated as a “target”. Yeah.

Last night, Mazembe was back in the room at Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium, and this time … we had no translator at all. Perhaps the previous woman was fired, or quit.

Instead, the gentlemen running the press conference translated from English to French to English. Which never works out really well, because the translator invariably reduced a paragraph to a sentence, and rushes through it, because his translation is dead time for the coach and athletes.

The Arabic speakers were just out of luck, which no doubt seemed ridiculous to them, considering the conference was being held in an Arab country.

I am happy to the report that the Spanish translator (for Pachuca of Mexico) did all right, though she didn’t know soccer at all. But I could figure out, pretty much, what the players meant to say.

The Korean translator was quite good. I will be interested to see how the people interpreting Italian/English/Arabic and Portuguese/English/Arabic will turn out. Those are difficult combinations, and how many people are fluent in all three?

It’s probably a good thing that Hekari United of Papua New Guinea didn’t bring in most of their players, because they speak pidgin English — which is basically incomprehensible to regular English speakers. The one player they brought to a media event went to college in Australia and works for the UN, and his English was very good.

Anyway, nothing personal, toward Hekari, but I imagine the translators didn’t mind when Hekari lost to Al Wahda of the UAE in the tournament’s opening match … and went home. No need to try to find the only pidgin translator in the Arabian Gulf.