Te reo Māori commentary on offer for Rugby World Cup

Sky Sport will be offering te reo Māori coverage for this year's Rugby World Cup.

Te Aorere Pēwhairangi (Ngāti Porou) and Tūmamao Harawira (Ngāpuhi and Te Whānau-ā-Apanui) will provide commentary in te reo Māori on every All Blacks match live on Sky Sport 2, while the matches on Sky Sport 1 will be in English.

Harawira told Afternoons said it was very important to allow viewers to easily access te reo Māori commentary in this day and age.

"We have short attention spans, we don't like too much directions to find something, so having access readily available for those who would like to listen or watch the game via Māori language commentary is huge."

As a Māori language sportscaster it was a privilege to have a platform as large as Sky TV, particularly for the All Blacks' World Cup games, he said.

Hemana Waaka had been doing Māori language sports casting for decades and was the person who had paved the way for Māori sports language commentary, Harawira said.

"If there was a yoda of the Māori language sports commentary Hemana would be that person. He basically invented the Māori language lexicon for sports such as softball, rugby, netball, rugby league, all the major sports that we have in New Zealand," he said.

"The fact that we actually have a Māori sports casting platform anywhere is because of the work that Hemana Waaka [has] done over those early years."

Developing Māori words to describe things is a big part of that, he said.

"Māori language trying to refine some of the terminology, not just in rugby but in all aspects of life we have here in Aotearoa and throughout the world."

Hemana Waaka had the ability to take a term from the English language and put a te reo Māori spin on it with the terms he devised still in use today, he said.

For example, the word for line-outs in Māori is a rārangi waho, which is a straight translation with rārangi meaning line and waho meaning out.

Fullback which is haika in Māori is an example of a word which is not a straight translation, Harawira said.

"He's [Waaka] from the Bay of Plenty region, from the Tūhoe region, and they use haika as an anchor, and so he likens the fullback position to a basic anchor, so the last line of defence that fullback is really the anchor of the team."

The Māori word for All Blacks is Ōpango, with pango meaning black and ō indicating all, he said.

While those who want to say 'go All Blacks' in Māori should say "kia kaha te kapa Ōpango", he said.

Harawira said one of the difficulties he anticipated in doing the World Cup commentary was with the names of players from teams from other countries whose last names might be French or Portuguese.

"So while we try to uphold the mana I suppose of te reo Māori, we also want to understand that in order for us to uphold the mana of te reo Māori, we also need to uphold the mana of the other names of the other teams ... so that's actually making sure that we say those names just as good and with the same clarity as we need to say the Māori names."

That meant working to uphold the mana of all languages, he said.

There was an energy and excitement prior to calling any game by the All Blacks, he said.

"Obviously the All Blacks are such a big deal here in Aotearoa and so being able to have that energy, that excitement and being able to take viewers through the roller coaster of emotion of an All Blacks' game up or down, win or lose."

Harawira advised that for those people who were just learning te reo trying to watch the match in Māori might be difficult.

But the Māori language games attracted a big viewership of those who were fluent in te reo, he said.