Bring your own dictionaries

Bring your own dictionaries

BUSAN, South Korea: Communication is one of the main barriers
at the Busan 2002 Asian Games for journalists, not only because
most South Koreans do not speak English, but also because of the
diversity of languages being used by the journalists themselves.

From Arabic, Urdu and Malay to Japanese, Chinese and even
Russian. You name it and it is probably being spoken here.

Sometimes journalists have to exchange information on each
other's contingent's strengths and weaknesses. But most of the
times, English is just not enough.

An Indonesian journalist was seen communicating with a Chinese
colleague using an electronic English-Chinese-English dictionary
to make their conversation easier.

"I think I should have brought a lot of dictionaries to
interview athletes or officials from far away countries," Yunas
Santhani Azis of Kompas said.--JP