One of the techniques I’ve relied on this year while watching the Tour de France is reading non-English publications with the assistance of Google Language Tools. As a result, I’ve been able to read articles that appear in L’Equipe, Le Monde, Marca, and Gazzetta dello Sport, all major print publications written in languages that I do not speak.
This technique is greatly aided by Google Toolbar which provides a “Translate into English” function on the Page Info pop-up menu. The big problem with Google Toolbar is that it only works with Microsoft Internet Explorer, a web browser that I cannot recommend due to its vast security problems. However, the Mozilla Project has a tool that emulates the Google Toolbar which is called Googlebar. It also has the “Translate into English” function.
When my wife and I saw the Tour in person in 1998 and 2001, I bought L’Equipe on a regular basis. This was the best source of Tour news available in some places, because the International Herald Tribune isn’t always available in small towns in France. In spite of the fact that my wife studied French in high school, it was often difficult for us to understand the nuances of stories in L’Equipe. As a result, our understanding was often limited to what the headlines and photo captions said.
The Google Translation Tool is an advantage that people watching at home have over people who are seeing stages in person.