The Beijing Olympic Games now are short of volunteer applicants who can speak less popular languages, said the Games organizers on Tuesday.

The Volunteer Department of the Organizing Committee of the Beijing Olympic Games (BOCOG) announced here that over 800,000 applicants had asked to fill in the 100,000 volunteer spots for the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics in August and September this year.

"But we still have a problem in language service talent pool," said Zhang Juming, deputy director of the volunteer department.

"We hope we can provide as many language services in less popular language as possible. Right now we provide services in 55 languages and we hope that as time goes by, we can provide more," Zhang said.

"But I don't think we have enough volunteer applicants good at those languages," he added.

Co-host cities like Shenyang also found lack of less popular language speakers a problem during their preparation.

(Xinhua News Agency January 9, 2008)