A retired professor has published a first of its kind dictionary: an English-Spanish guide to baseball terminology.

Since baseball enjoys great popularity in a number of Spanish-speaking countries, and many Spanish-speakers in the USA follow the game, could there be a niche market for a Spanish-English baseball dictionary?

Retired foreign language and literature professor Jim O’Neill, 73, started compiling Spanish baseball terminology while teaching a fall session of Spanish 311 at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. What started as an attempt to garner students’ enthusiasm by getting them to talk about the World Series in Spanish grew into a 17-year project: painstakingly researching and collecting Spanish and English baseball vocabulary and expressions.

To gather this information, O’Neill scoured 8 Spanish-language newspapers and listened to baseball game broadcasts in Spanish. “What emerged was a 344-page, 7,500-definition book that codifies the rich and sometimes perplexing jargon of baseball, including five whole pages of variations on the phrase ‘hit a home run’,” explains an article from the SCSU University Chronicle.

Since baseball interpreting is used in the Major Leagues, O’Neill’s dictionary will certainly find at least a certain audience.

If you don’t want to strike out in your next international negotiation, contact a qualified language service provider such as Language Translation Inc.. We offer expert translation and language interpretation assistance for all of your company’s crucial projects. “Let us show you how good translation should be.”

Betty Carlson

Subscribe to Language Lines, our monthly newsletter, for the latest information about the growing importance of culture and language in the business world.