Introducing the ‘News Translation for Latino Communities’ Project
If you work at a US publication or news site and would like to get stories translated into Spanish, this project is for you.
Hello Spanish-friendly folks and news orgs 👋🏽
I’m looking to work with local news outlets in NYC and in other parts of the United States for a class project that will allow my students to translate news stories from English to Spanish, and perhaps vice versa.
This semester I’m teaching a Translation class at Lehman College, focused on the translation of nonliterary, nontechnical texts of expository prose into Spanish and English.
We need texts and audiovisual materials to translate, after weeks of reading essays and academic papers on translation.
News stories are the perfect kind of “text” for us to translate because there is a real information gap affecting Latinx communities in NYC, as well as in the US in general, that prevents them from accessing critical information on healthcare, politics, environmental and racial justice, immigrants’ rights, you name it.
Most of my students are Latinx. They want to help outlets tackle language access barriers.
Spanish is the second most spoken language in the US, according to the Pew Research Center. The U.S. Hispanic population reached 62.1 million in 2020, up from 50.5 million in 2010. And in NYC, they *we* represent the 29.1 % of the total population.
Yet, in 2019, the ‘Hispanic Media Today’ report written by Jessica Retis, Ph.D., identified “a growing need for linguistic and cultural translations between Hispanic and mainstream media to ensure that the information needs of Spanish speakers can be met, regardless of language barriers.”
The Latino Media Report, published by professor Graciela Mochkofsky and a bilingual team lead by her at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, identified among the Anglo media corporations serving U.S. Latino communities, only 22 newspapers and 1 magazine published content in Spanish in the whole country.
However, over a year later the Nieman Lab predicted this numbers could grow in the near future. Specifically, Stefanie Murray and Anthony Advincula from the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University wrote that “translation and content production in multiple languages will accelerate in the U.S. in 2021”, due to a COVID-related public information crisis, the BLM summer of racial reckoning and a debate on what “media reparation” efforts could look like.
My students and I want to offer media outlets our help to provide culturally relevant translations and try to bridge communication gaps to better serve US Latino communities.
Some perks of allowing us to translate your stories/podcasts/videos:
Potentially expanding your audience to underserved Spanish-speaking communities.
Contributing to expanding Latinx students’ multilingual skills and media literacy, by allowing them to read and translate news they may not otherwise be getting.
Combat fake news and misinformation spread among marginalized communities.
We are especially interested in collaborating with media organizations that cover Latinx communities, but we are also open to working with other publications/non-profit organizations/ public institutions, especially in the NYC area.
Please reach out to us on Twitter or leave a comment below. We are always excited to work with others. Get in touch!
