The greatly anticipated event is almost upon us… with so much hype surrounding the big event, we couldn’t not comment on it! Very soon, Prince William and Kate Middleton will tie the knot in front of nearly 2,000 guests at Westminster Abbey, and what promises to be a vast number of people via television and internet. With so many people wanting to be involved, from all over the world, multilingual communication is in high demand. The monarchy has long been an extremely popular tourist attraction for foreign visitors, and there are a huge number of non-English speakers who want to be able to watch and understand the wedding of the year.
It is estimated that 2 billion people worldwide will be watching the couple exchange vows – over a quarter of the world’s population. This means that a large number of people outside the UK will be watching the wedding, on television or online. This of course raises the question of how the wedding will be transmitted. Will there be subtitles? Will it be dubbed?
VME, the “first national Spanish-language television network presented by public television stations” in America, is promoting the royal wedding on their homepage, announcing that “La Boda Real” will be broadcast live on Friday 29th April. Coverage starts as early as 4am, showing the build-up and then the ceremony itself in its entirety. This will be preceded by a week-long agenda of programmes about royalty, both in the UK and in Spain. The wedding will also be broadcast on the Royal youtube channel, to be viewed all over the world.
The Visit Britain site provides information about the wedding in a range of languages, including a list of places to stay in the UK in Spanish and a page about the official royal wedding website on their French site. There is a whole section dedicated to the royal wedding on the Spanish El Mundo website and a number of articles in the French press on the topic.
It is clear to see that it is not just the UK that is getting excited about the royal wedding – it seems that people all over the world will either be visiting the country to get involved, or watching an online stream or television broadcast of the most talked about wedding of the year. It is great to see that advances in technology and international communication mean that billions of people of all different nationalities, of all different languages, from all over the world, can be involved in this momentous occasion in British history.
28 April 2011 16:44