criteria for people judging at unicon or international events (Closed for comments)
Comments about this discussion:
Started
I know that our judges are volunteers and there's always a lack of volunteers and it's not easy to find enough. But in order to provide a high quality of our events i suggest to make it mendatory for people judging at unicon or other international events to be able to communicate in English or have an interpreter along and available at any time during judging.
That rule would ensure that the responsible director or chief judge has the possility to make sure every judge knows the rules and to talk with a judge if any problems occur.
At last unicon in korea there were many volunteers that could only speak korean (maybe also japanese but i couldn't really communicate with them). Some judges for examples the ones that took the length of coasting didn't knew the rules and just measured whatever they thought, sometimes the wheel, sometimes your feet, sometimes a weird length in between and you couldn't tell them how to do it right cause of the lack of a shared language for communication.
And in order to prevent a situation like that to happen again i would like to have a rule for people judging never ind if it's track, freestyle, muni, ... to be able to communicate in English or have an interpreter along and available at any time during judging.
Comment
I agree that not being able to communicate the requirements of the job is a big problem.
However, if your objective is
(...) ensure that the responsible director or chief judge has the possility to make sure every judge knows the rules and to talk with a judge if any problems occur.
... then it would also be OK if the responsible director or chief judge and the judge/volunteer in question share a common language. This doesn't need to be English, it could be Korean or French (2020!) or whatever.
Comment
Yeah i agree with you. Maybe it could be something like English or a language the Chief Judge published before?
Comment
Sounds like the core part of this idea is that volunteers must provide, be provided with, translation help. In cases where there is a class or orientation of some sort, translators need to be present for that, but maybe not so much for implementing that information.
I definitely would not go with a rule that requires English speakers, or requires things to pass through English to get done. The IUF started out with a lot of English speakers, but even our founder was not a native English speaker. In fact, using Korea as an example, we should expect a large percentage of our volunteers to be Korean, and it is up to us to translate our English info for them.
In a perfect world, the IUF Rulebook would exist in all (or most) of the languages of the majority of our competitors, using the same section numbering so it's easy to refer to. Remember, this is a perfect world, where people actually have copies of the rulebook with them, either on a smartphone screen, laptop or paper. As our sport slowly matures, we should expect these things, and work hard to make them happen. But training for new or inexperienced volunteers should always be done before events, and the lead officials must make sure their new trainees are doing things correctly before leaving them on their own.
Comment
I agree that the director or chief judge should be responsible that every judge knows the rules and works according to them. But experience shows that it doesn't always work out that good. And i mean yeah it would be nice if we could translate it for them, but can you translate it to korean? I can't. Also it still doesn't cover the case if some problems appear on site during judging.
Comment
Yes we are far from perfect, and we don't pay our volunteers enough! :-) For doing translated documents, especially complex ones like a rulebook, takes a large commitment from a group of people who are both able, and willing to do the work. Usually for free also. I don't even know how many languages we have the IUF Rulebook in, or which of those is even the current one? Always a less-than-perfect scenario.
At Unicon X I was the Referee for the Track events. This is an even more difficult situation than having a non-local-language speaker in a place with the head official speaks the local language. I was provided a translator who spent the day near me, but it was difficult; it's hard to tell how much the many people running the events really understood, and how much was assumptions being made on everyone's part. Since that event, or maybe after Unicon XII where I again did this job in Japan. I recommended that those top official jobs, whenever possible, be done by people more familiar with the local language, for better sharing of information with large groups of people. This is also not possible for every, or even most events, depending where a Unicon is.
For simple areas of judging, like a Coasting competition, you can do live, physical demonstrations of what to do, but this is limited and still doesn't allow for quality feedback if people have questions, etc.
How to turn this into a rule or policy? Gently I guess, and with as much useful advice as possible. The more important the task, such as Line Judge vs. Referee in charge of that event, it helps to speak the local language, but it's even more important to be an expert at how to run that event. So your top official are less likely to speak the local language, but your lower-responsibility officials will be more likely to speak it, and be able to at least communicate with most of the people around them, and working with them.
I don't know if any of that was very helpful...