Winter Olympics: glossaries and useful links

Olympics is always a great time for me. I don't care about political issues, or doping scandals, or anything else. I just love watching great athletes compete. Many of them have to go through so different serious obstacles to even take part in the Games! Being a linguist, I can't help googling some terms I hear on TV just to make sure I get them right etc. So this week I decided to make up a list of useful links to resources and glossaries about winter Olympic sports.

All winter Olympic sports can be divided into three groups:
1. Ice sports
2. Alpine, skiing and snowboarding
3. Nordic events

Ice sports include ice hockey, figure skating, bobsled, skeleton, short track speed skating, curling, and luge.
The second category includes alpine skiing, freestyle skiing and snowboarding.
Nordic events include biathlon, cross-country skiing, ski jumping and Nordic combined (ski jumping and cross-country skiing)

Today I am going to share useful glossaries and articles on ice sports. But first of all, I'd like to share Sochi 2014 general glossary (English-Russian). It's a pdf-file.

Figure skating and speed skating

- Wikipedia glossary of figure skating terms
- Here's a good article explaining some history of figure skating and a short glossary. It's good for language learners and for people who really don't know much about figure skating.
- Here's a great article about figure skating jumps
- And here's a link to US Figure Skating glossary.
- Here's also a small English-Russian figure skating glosary
- Wikipedia article on short track speed skating
- Speed on ice: terms to know in Olympic speed skating
- Speedskating techniques (video)
- Short-track speed skating glossary

Ice Hockey

Hockey is a very popular sport, so there are literally lots of resources in the web. I tried to pick the best.
- Wikipedia glossary of ice hockey terms
- Ice hockey glossary from the book "Ice Hockey Made Simple: A Spectator's Guide" - I personally find this glossary more helpful than the Wikipedia one
- And here's a glossary of hockey slang terms for those who aren't so strong in their knowledge of slang (like me)
- I also found an English-Russian glossary of hockey terms.
- Here's an article in a fellow translator's blog with a link to his own hockey terminology glossary based on his translation experience.
- Also, the previous article helped me find Sochi 2014 terminology glossary. It's a pdf-file.

Bobsled, skeleton and luge

- Yahoo Sports shares 10 most important terms to know for Olympic bobsledding
- You can find quite a few terms in Sochi 2014 general glossary.
- I also found Sochi 2014 French to Russian bobsleigh, skeleton and luge glossary. It can be downloaded for free here.
- And here's Sochi 2014 English to Russian version of the same glossary. You can download it for free here.

Curling

- Wikipedia glossary of curling
- And here's a link to the Complete curling glossary (English only)
- There's also a Russian version of Wikipedia glossary of curling

Hope these resources are helpful! And if you find more useful stuff, please share it with others! Foreign language learners as well as translators and interpreters will be forever thankful to you :)

Olga Arakelyan,
Your Professional Translator

P.S. If you type "glossary" in the search box in the upper right corner of my blog, you will find more posts like that with useful links about motorsport, soccer, music, tourism, customs terminology and more.

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