Blog

A World of Variety – the BailongBall Disciplines

Posted on by Mike Ritz

A World of Variety – The BailongBall Disciplines

Standardization of Wordings:
New Titles for the Individual Disciplines

Your own name is an important communication tool, because it is usually one of the first words that comes up in a conversation with somebody who doesn’t know you. The name is like a business card that opens a door to your own (life) story for any stranger.
 
In a monolingual and monosystemic world, choosing a suitable name would be easier than in our real multicultural community. After all, language, pronunciation and characters have many country-specific facets.

In China, where our sport was invented, there have been several name changes, from its birth in 1991 “娱乐球 (Pinyin: YuLeQiu)” to “太极柔力球 (Pinyin: TaiJiRouLiQiu)” to the currently used “柔力球 (Pinyin: RouLiQiu)”.

Since the sport’s inception in Europe via TBBF in 2003, the name “Taiji Bailong Ball” has been changed to “BailongBall” only once in the course of the new strategic direction in 2018.

In China, on the other hand, the sport is introduced to any foreigner as “Rouliball” or “Roliball”. In April 2022’s blog post, I proposed a solution for the ambiguity using picture language because all people (like most other living beings) in the world understand pictures … I suppose one could argue that writings are also abstract pictures! The idea to use the colorful signé as a worldwide sport sign and to combine it with a country-specific name,  therefore, seems the optimal solution to me.

In the past, we often faced the challenge at international tournaments of not understanding the announcement of Chinese organizers, which were translated into English. Turns out, that insufficient translations of the original texts, some of them machine generated, are at the very core of this problem. This in turn may be attributable to many translators and translation software products simply not (yet) knowing anything about our rather young sport. Not surprisingly so, it seems – to date, there (still) is no worldwide published and communicated standard dictionary for the sport of Bailongball / Roliball.
 
The standardization of (technical) expressions, though, is not a problem if you are among people who speak a common language. All BailongBall players in the world share a common language: their sport. Nevertheless for an international exchange, especially when engaging in competition, one needs a standardized glossary / dictionary, in which all disciplines and orientations are clearly multilingual understandable.

We saw this as an opportunity and developed a complete, globally valid glossary, which will already be applied with the 5th International Jinzhong Online Assembly in September 2022. With it, TBBF introduced the following changes:

We have summarized the complete glossary in a table

What is truely unique about the sport of Bailongball is that it is 2-in-1: two variations in one game, namely: Art and / or Game.

Art is the umbrella term for the game with racket and ball by one person or a group of persons, each having at least one racket and one ball, with the primary goal of not losing the contact of the ball to the racket blade through movements, figures and techniques.

Game is the generic term describing at least two people with their own racket and ball, playing the ball from one side to the other, using various movements and techniques.

In the center, as an intersection of Art and Game, is “Freestyle”. Firmly manifested by the inventor Prof. Bai Rong since the birth of the sport and by the TBBF, it stands for freedom, loose and carefree performing, simply flowing like water, alone or with others…

Many thanks to all those involved in the TBBF wording process, first and foremost: Philippe Marty, Susanne Ritz, Irina Rusavina, Heidi Rempel, Maya Lentze, Dr. Edeltraud Richter, Liqin Cheng and Eduardo Elias.

Xiaofei Sui
TBBF Chairman

6 thoughts on “A World of Variety – the BailongBall Disciplines”

  1. Mike Ritz says:

    Wir werden unsere Web Seite entsprechend mit den Neuerungen ergänzen / anpassen. Schau vorbei, um dir zusätzliche Infos, Videos, etc. anzusehen!
    We’ll add / modify our website with the respective changes. Keep visiting, to check out additional info, videos, etc!

    Reply
  3. Irina Rusavina says:

    When Confucius was asked what he would start running the state, he replied he would “rectify the names” to make words correspond to reality…

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *