Timing Graphics

[Mark]

I suppose it's only like the messages on the screen in the Tour de France, such as the 'peleton' and 'tete de la course'. That's in French no matter what country the broadcast is in.

Yes but that just adds to the flavour of a French event. Whereas F1 is a World championship.

So it seems there are no translations, I thought F1 would have been a bit cleverer than that!
It's not too hard to do after all.


I seem to recall sometime in the dim and distant past seeing French graphics during a French GP (must have been in the 80's at the latest), or did I imagine it?!

[Copse]

So it seems there are no translations, I thought F1 would have been a bit cleverer than that!
It's not too hard to do after all.

It would be absolutely mad to delay updates and information in order to translate them first. The ones that are standard and can be translated beforehand are so common and simple that it barely has a point.

And if the stewards issue a message saying "Drive through for car ## for not keeping within the X car length distance behind the safety car." it would be madness to make viewers have to wait for a translator to notice, understand, translate and publish. By then he'd be in and out of the pits. Translations add delays, therefore they should be avoided.

OTOH, it bugs me seriously that they just drop the umlaut on Hülkenberg's name in an international championship. It just makes people mispronounce it.

[Mark]

Not really. The standard graphics can have translations ahead of time. There can also be standard templates for 'Car x is under investigation' and 'Drivenl through penalty for car x'. Having to display a message which is could not be pre loaded in advance is a very unusual occurence.

[Drew]

From what I remember of living abroad and desperately trying to find bars to watch F1 in, all the graphics are the same and they get the same radio feeds too. I assume that the host broadcaster / F1 / whoever create the whole live feed and then BBC and other broadcasters can briefly switch to their reporter in the pits or anyother person.

[Aikidoka]

From what I understand, the visuals you see from the moment the F1 whooshy logo plays is the FOM World Feed - BBC, ITV, RTE, SKY etc. simply rebroadcast that (after paying Bernie a substantial amount for the rights to do so). The graphics are added by the FOM World Feed team, so would naturally not be translated - why would Bernie spend any more money than he needs to.

I would imagine that there is some clause that says that the broadcaster cannot interfere with the on-screen visuals for advertising reasons, so they couldn't plaster over the FOM "Final Lap" flash or "Winner" with the local translation.

For the record, I watched the German GP in Germany (not at the circuit, I just happened to be on holiday there while it was on) and they also had all the text in English.

[555-04Q2]

Hopefully this will be an easy question

The timing graphics during Grand Prix, most of it is language neutral, but I'd assumed that the parts of it written in English would be shown in a different language depending on the country of broadcast, e.g. in France you'd see "Tour" instead of "Lap".

Is this the case?

No, even when I watched a race while staying in China it was all in English.

[Bezza]

It is just like airline traffic / airline pilots - they must all be fluent in English, it is now a universal language. almost everywhere they learn it - so it makes sense for English to be the default language for F1 graphics and radio conversations.

[nigelred5]

yeah, but WHICH English???

[AndyL]

yeah, but WHICH English???

It always makes me laugh when I hear British 125cc motorcycle GP rider Bradley Smith talking to his team, in the default language of the 125GP paddock - English with a Spanish accent!