They seem to be pretty straightforward and utilitarian: Mexico is MEX, Scotland is SCO, Haiti is HAI, etc. The ones that aren’t the first three letters of the country’s name also make sense: USA for United States of America, for example. I’ve noticed a few outliers, though. Morocco, for instance, is MAR, which I’m guessing has something to do how Morocco’s name of its own country is rendered in Arabic (or maybe Berber) and and then transliterated into Roman script. Bosnia & Herzegovina is BIH, which I’m guessing has to do with the I being the word for “and” in … their language. Or maybe the I in Bosnia. Or something.
So, does FIFA tell each country how to render the letters, in their own tongue? Will the Germans watching see their team rendered as DEU on the chyron on the screen? Or is it consistent across all countries that use Roman script?
No, it is French (Maroc) or Spanish (Marruecos). I assume you are aware that Moroccans do not call their country “Morocco” or anything that sounds like that; it’s the Western Kingdom.
I don’t know about other countries and their broadcasters, but in Germany, no, Deutschland is rendered as GER, and everybody understands it. Before 1990, it were the even more obscure FRG and GDR, but we also quickly adapted. And I’m watching the KSA-URU game at the moment.
ETA: I think all on-screen graphics of WC games are transferred unchanged and untranslated from the US broadcast here.
This seems like a great place to point out that a hypothetical match between Sweden and Denmark, shortened to the three letter codes, would most likely be SWE-DEN, and the omitted letters would spell DEN-MARK.
FIFA uses its own codes - e.g. Nigeria isn’t NIG - that’s been assigned to Niger. This is to avoid the embarrassment of a Nigeria-Germany match - much more likely than Niger-Germany. (of course - you could flip the countries - but the order may be important).
The one that instantly springs to mind is from baseball. The local Philadelphia NBC affiliate would show the score using the logo from the teams cap. When the Philadelphia Phillies played the Pittsburgh Pirates the game started with the score P0 0P. They eventually retired the poop score to the dismay of fans.
That’s surprising. Here in the UK, the World Cup coverage is shared between BBC and ITV, and they each have their own branded graphics. So there’s certainly a graphic-free feed available.
Which makes sense, because viewers in nations that don’t use the Latin alphabet want to know what’s going on too.
That is very probable, but I think the German stations just didn’t bother to create their own graphics and saved the effort and costs, because most Germans have enough English to understand the original captions, and you only need a few keywords.
