I apologize for being slow to reply. I live outside the Republic of ProZ.com, but I visit frequently to chat with my ProZian friends when I have a chance. I did not have much of a chance today. I know that unanswered questions can delay projects, and for that I am sorry.

The information you added was very helpful. I am still in the dark as to why such information is frequently withheld by askers.

Since the statement you are translating is part of an interview, I can reasonably conclude that the statement was spoken, not written, and that it was a spontaneous, unprepared statement that was given in response to questions not shared beforehand.

This is significant, because the sentence you are asking about shows signs of a momentary verbal lapse. When we speak, we do not have the same editorial tools that are available to us when we write. For example, I am now writing an answer to your question, and I am making a lot of mistakes, but every time I make a mistake, I fix it, so the final text appears perfect (or so I hope).

Unfortunately, when we speak, we don’t have that luxury. We sometimes begin a sentence and then halfway through, we decide that was not an auspicious way to start, so we abandon the sentence and begin a more promising one. Or we introduce a word in the sentence and then realize that the word was not the best choice, so we finish the sentence somehow, but without saying what we had in mind.

The speaker is comparing two things: the preparedness of an athlete to engage in a physical effort, and the preparedness to engage in an intellectual effort. He refers to intellectual efforts in two ways: “cerebral” and “academic.” It is the kind of effort that we all expend when we translate or write answers to KudoZ questions. It is cerebral in the sense that it involves the cerebral cortex (the outer layer of the brain that is involved in perception, thought, memory, and language). It is academic in the sense that it involves activities commonly performed by students and scholars.

How do the two “battles” compare with each other? How do they contrast? In the opinion of this athlete, the physical battle is something most people are not well-prepared for:

“Most people are not used to that physical battle.”

It is something that we need to learn:

“I have to learn what being a professional athlete was about.”

We can reasonably conclude from this that the intellectual battle is the opposite. Unfortunately, the speaker fails to express himself clearly and distinctly about this point. Words fail him. He stumbles and produces a faulty sentence. Based on the statement as whole, we can say with reasonable confidence that he has a good command of English, but he just stumbled and botched that one sentence:

“We are more inclined in our cerebral business, academic brain.”

This sentence is a jumble. I am sure that if this athlete had a chance to revise it, he would. It is possible that this was not an accurate record of his statement, but only a faulty transcription of what he said on tape. Perhaps the recording was not clear or that the transcription was done unprofessionally. It is even possible that it was done by a speech-to-text application. Another possibility is that the speaker made the statement in a different language and then the statement was translated by a machine without the benefit of a human editor.

Regardless of how the statement was botched, we kind of know what the speaker wanted to say: we humans are more at home engaging in activities of the brain than in activities of the body. The word “inclined” does not quite fit. He either didn’t say it or said it when he meant to choose a different word. Or he may have intended to include other words to bring out his thought but the words never materialized.

Likewise, the word “business” is too casual and too vague. “Cerebral activities” or “cerebral efforts” would have been closer to the target.

What can a translator do when translating a botched sentence? We perform a creative reading of the sentence based on the surrounding text. There is no doubt that the speaker was trying to say something like:

“Most people are not used to that physical battle. We are more at home when we engage in cerebral endeavors, when we use the academic side of our brain. But when you come to that physical battle, I have to persevere. I have to learn what being a professional athlete was about.

When a sentence does not make sense as it stands and you try to make sense of it to translate it, you must alert the agency/client. You can write, "The sentence is incoherent as it stands. I believe I know what it means based on the context. My translation reflects this understanding."

Because my answer involves a bit of guesswork, I am giving it a lesser degree of certainty.