CBC's Andrew Chang in Rio: How do news conferences work

If you've ever seen a news conference on TV, you know basically how they work.

• Step 1: Interesting person takes a seat at the front of the room.
• Step 2: Reporters ask questions.
• Step 3: Interesting person responds to questions.

Here in Rio, news conferences work more or less the same way, but must also take into account an interesting problem: how do you hold a news conference where all the journalists from around the world speak different languages and when you don't even know in advance what language the medal-winning athletes might speak?

The answer: technologyand a small army of translators.

• CBC'sAndrew Chang shares his Rio experiences

Every journalist has access to a headset and wireless pack kind of like what you'd get on a guided audio tour at a museum. On the pack, you can switch between multiple channels different languages for simultaneous translation.

The packsusually accommodate up to fivelanguages: English, Portuguese, and whatever three languages the three medallists speak.

And let me tell you,it can make for interesting conversations.

A subtly tuned question referring to a bitter defeatcan all of a sudden come across as a harsh jab, poking the open wound of failure.

Athletes' answers may come across as terseor gruff,because the target language simply doesn't have the right expression to communicate the full depth of what he or she is trying to say.

It can sometimes feel like a stilted game of "I'll ask you a broad question" and "you give me a broad answer" and "we'll call it a day."

But for all the difficulties of being understood, staff here have done a pretty darned good job at covering all the bases.

While working in the media mixed zone in Rio, I've done one-on-one interviews with athletes in Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Italian, Spanish, and French (although that last one, I can speak on my own).

The team of volunteers and staff here at gymnastics seems to speak almost every language on the planetand finding someone to translate both to and from English usually isn't a problem.

The biggest problem, actually, is simply one of time.

In the mixed zone, reporters get 90 seconds to ask questions.And between translating the question, then translating the answer,that doesn't usually leave a whole lot of time for a follow-up.