Radio programmer Luis Soto faced a challenge when he wanted to explain the match by using Quecuha of Peru's local languages: Many football terms did not correspond to this language. Soto, who has not given up on this, has created a new football terminology.
If you happen to visit Peru as a Turkish citizen, the local people of Peru may not have any slightest idea regarding the whereabouts of Turkey, but they can tell the names of the Turkey national football players. Although these countries are too far apart, located in different hemispheres and have completely different cultures, there are great similarities between them in the meantime. One of them is their great interest in football.
It is not difficult to predict how important this event is for Peru, which gained admission to the World Cup this year for the first time since 1982. When the radio player Luis Soto wanted to present the World Cup match by using his local language Quechua, he noticed a major obstacle. In the language of the Quechua, whose roots were based on the Inca Empire has none of the modern football terms; even a soccer ball!
Quechua is the local language of the people living in the Andes. This language is spoken by 7 million of people in Peru as well as in South Africa countries including Ecuador, Colombia, Chile and Argentina by 8-10 million of people. Today, Quechua is considered one of the official languages of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.
There was no correspondence of soccer ball!
Soto is running a sport program with Percy Chile and Saturnino Pulla every day on the Peruvian radio called Inti Raymi. Of course, people in Peru showed excitement after they gained admission to World Cup with an intervention of 34 years.
Luis Soto's attempt to create a football terminology in Quechua language goes back to 10 years ago. Soto started to create new words and expressions in Quechua culture in order to translate the World Cup match to Quechua natives on the radio. His job wasn't easy at all, since he even had to produce a new word for the “soccer ball”. Now, the soccer ball in the Quechua language would be “qara q’ompo”. Soto has made an intense preparation to report the 2018 World Cup matches on radio. He became fluid in reporting of the matches after his practice in the computer games and made sure that he is able to thoroughly report the matches to millions of Peruvian folks.
Significant effort to protect language
Soto's work is a very valuable effort to preserve the language that is disappearing over time. The first story of this idea is as follows: Cienciano, the local football team of the city of Cuzco, which comprises the city of Macchu Picchu, which is one of the settlements of Inca Empire, wins the South American Cup in 2003 by defeating Argentina's River Plate team. A year later, Soto wants to report a match of Cienciano in Quechua language. From that time on, he has begun to create a dictionary for football terms and phrases. He has done a pretty detailed search for that. For example, he interviewed many local people and got their opinions and experiences by asking “How would you express this situation?”
While Soto is reporting the matches, he draws analogies from his own culture to make local people familiarize with the new terms. He says “He must have eaten a lot of quinoa, he is that strong” for example, for a football player who hits the ball very strongly. Quinoa, one of the most popular foods of healthy diet, is actually a food that the peoples of the Andes have benefited for over thousands of years.
While Peru is saying goodbye to the World Cup after a 1-0 defeat to Denmark, they explain the situation as follows: “We feel like we fell into the void over the clouds.” Peru is working hard to preserve the Quechua language, which is one of the local languages and spoken by about one fifth of the country's population. One of the most important reasons for this is to prevent racism. “I don't do this for the money, Soto says. I'm doing it so that people can be represented.”
