How are nonprofit newsrooms translating coverage to better serve their audiences?

Four outlets share advice for other publishers.

Ana De Gante, ESL director at Seymour Community Schools in Indiana, supports what she says is a growing number of international students at the high school. Photo by Carter Barrett for Side Effects Public Media

Over the last year, INN’s research team has been on a mission to better understand how nonprofit news organizations are serving communities of color. In a recent Q&A series with our members, we heard from multiple newsrooms that are translating select stories or events to the non-English languages that are relevant to communities they serve.

Translating journalism is not new, but many nonprofit newsrooms have renewed or launched new translation efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic to reach the people most affected by the public health crisis. Many nonprofit outlets are now grappling with challenges related to translating coverage: knowing how to define the need, committing to coverage in new languages and designing workflows to support the work.

We asked four INN member newsrooms to break it down for us. Injustice Watch in Illinois, Honolulu Civil Beat in Hawaii, Voice of San Diego in California and WFYI Indianapolis in Indiana share advice for other news organizations that are considering how to translate stories into non-English languages.

See here for the full case study, written by Vignesh Ramachandran. Below is an excerpt.

1. There must be commitment throughout the organization. That’s the most important thing, Voice of San Diego’s Markow said. Without organizational support, it’s difficult to commit the resources — time, money and people — to translation initiatives. Markow also recommended having a point person. “If someone doesn’t own it and isn’t held accountable for it, it doesn’t work very well.”
2. Start translation initiatives with something small and consistent. Instead of feeling like the whole website or every single story needs to be translated, reframe the effort with a tailored approach. Civil Beat’s Hofschneider recommended starting with one or two articles. “Having something small is still valuable, even if it’s not like a big regular feature. Even if you find that maybe it is a little bit more difficult, I feel like once a month is still better than not at all,” she said. “You never know how the community will respond and what you might be able to learn from it.”
3. Momentum can build from that small starting point. “If you’re working in a community where there’s an indigenous language, or a migrant community who you think wants access, I would just start small and then see who in your community really wants to support the effort, and then scale up from there,” Hofschneider said.
4. Consider the content. For example, at Injustice Watch, “It’s important to not solely translate stories about immigration, because you don’t want to signal to Spanish-speaking audiences that that’s the only issue you think matters to them,” Emmanuel said.
5. Have multiple trusted translators. Civil Beat recommended having at least two or three translators in rotation so there is always a backup. Voice of San Diego suggested asking a trusted source for recommendations, since professional translation providers that work nationwide tend to be expensive. Side Effects also recommended turning to trusted sources: “Most community organizations, government entities and nonprofits have to provide some kind of multilingual resource just to serve their client base. Ask them: ‘When you need to translate something, who do you work with?’ Then approach the resource directly to ask about pricing and reach and other logistics,” Howell said.
6. Have a plan for distributing the work. It’s not enough to translate your journalism and hope it will find its audience. Side Effects’ Howell recommended identifying the key information sources in a community and reaching out to them — whether that’s a community newsletter, a newspaper, a podcast or a curated Facebook page. “If you are offering them something that they don’t actually need, then it becomes less of a gift and more of a burden,” Howell said. “So it’s really better to start with the conversation of: We would like to reach this community. What information needs are you observing? How can we help fill them?”
7. Cultivate trust and partnerships. You can’t just parachute in, said Voice of San Diego’s Markow: “It’s naive to think that you’re going to start translating and, suddenly, people are going to read you because you’re in whatever language you’re translating to.” Be a trusted source or be willing to build that credibility.

Read the full case study.