A world of meaning (or why we should share stories in multiple languages)
Thinking in several languages means living in different worlds. Is there a way to bring several cultures together by making media speak a universal, global language?
Since I moved to New York, I’ve been devouring media like crazy: there’s so much going on, so many interesting ideas and topics but still I feel there’s something missing. Given my social nature, I have the feeling that reading a story doesn’t end there: I need to make something out of it, I have to talk about it with someone who cares about the same issue.
Sharing with our peers is an everyday thing (thanks to gChat, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter) but what happens when a piece we really like is written in a language that most people at home don’t speak? How can I connect even more with my friends from Argentina, but also with lovely people I’ve met over the years, who are from all over… Cairo, India, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Russia, Kenya, Poland? Even so, is this English that I speak the same one as Americans do? Are there differences between articles published in the U.S., compared to the U.K., for instance? Do Irish people get the same jokes? Are there metaphors we — as second-language speakers — are unlikely to get, or very likely to misunderstand? Is there something as a universal, somehow global, way of adapting the same content for people located anywhere?
I think there is because, although languages — as the Tower of Babel myth illustrates — are bringing us apart, there are many coincidences brought by the Internet that are making us closer. Worldwide, we share the same pop culture icons, a similar taste for Hollywood movies, the same concern for gossips. But not only we care about this, we would also like to know more about weird anecdotes from remote places — like the old saying goes: Paint your village and you shall paint the world.
We crave to know. And we are desperately looking for similarities and connections because we are becoming more and more aware that we all belong to the same place. That’s one of the powers of the Internet: whatever happens online, a worldwide community will talk about it, will take a stand, will share it, will make the viral thing go even more viral — even in places we have never thought of. And this is true for Kim Kardashian’s break-the-Internet pic, but this is also true for Ferguson.
The multiple conversations inspired by events like these ones are the byproduct of varied framings, which depend on different views on facts themselves. Although most of the world news come from only a few sources — by big players like the wires A.P, Reuters and Bloomberg still taking the lead — local media companies are shaping news differently to make them suit the demand of specific markets. Localization — the art of making the same content work across several languages, considering not only translation but also adaptation — has long been done by publishers from countries that don’t have the resources or access to original sources, and are doomed to tweaking information produced somewhere else.
Well-done localization can be a great tool for audience development. For the 10th anniversary of September 11th, my co-workers and I produced a multimedia special for TN.com.ar, the site of Argentina’s most-seen TV news channel, and we turned upside down materials produced in English, mainly from The New York Times but also some messages by Wikileaks. I had the time of my life working with these materials, discovering more about the attack, learning while doing what it meant for other countries like mine. Choosing the most emotional bites (text messages of families saying goodbye, but also of people who weren’t there by coincidence), we were able to connect with a local audience. They wouldn’t have responded the same way if we only stick to facts, we had to go deeper into the sentimental issues. The day when the special was launched our traffic went up, driving more people into the site than regular sections that often have a large viewership.
This happens because languages say a lot not only about how we communicate, but also about the things that are important for us, also about who we are. Words shape our identity — Lacan himself said that our psyche and personalities are shaped by what others tell us — and we can use different languages for different purposes. English, for me, it’s my work language, it’s so hard for me to go back to Spanish to talk about the media, for instance. Spanish, on the other hand, reminds me of home, of family, it brings me closer to my personal side. In this story by The Economist, a study proves that actually whenever we are managing multiple languages we are indeed coping with different personalities, living different existences, using one language over another depending on several goals in mind.
The same goes for the news: there’s no “one size fits all” solution, it’s necessary to look into customized offers for every linguistic market. We can use automated tools, machine translation, adaptation software and processes but, apart from all that, we need a multicultural sensitivity that can tell us what makes sense from an editorial perspective.
Sometimes we have underrated international news, thinking that what really matters is what’s near. Although hyper-local journalism is booming, global-oriented media proved to be a great business model for players who can manage a localization workflow, which in the media industry requires specific skills: translating but also having a journalistic criteria, knowing how to come up with witty headlines, clever framings, thought-provoking endings. So we need translators who are also creative writers, who can think in terms of what the audience needs to know, and why is important for them.
We also have to take the plunge to go for an ambitious project, which requires multiple stakeholder management and dealing with many factors. Will people care about this piece of news, over another? Does it make sense to invest resources into growing a market abroad? Are there partnerships to be made, working with news providers who follow a different logic? Are writers/translators/journalists interested in having their name out there, in many places at the same time?
In the making of Latin American Radar I felt there was a need for local reporters to get the word out in English, so many volunteers joined. Because this language is so universal, it reaches so many people but at the same time there are others left out.
More than half Internet sites are in English, the latest Internet World Stats says. Still, over 70 percent of the global online audience speaks a language other than English. This means a great disconnection between what’s published online and the people who read it. Is there a way to fill this void?
Last year, working as a Language Specialist at Google, I had to make sure that over a hundred products were understood in Latin American Spanish. What seems like an easy thing turned out to be more complex: I learned that is so important to have product knowledge to deliver better translations, and it’s so relevant finding out details about the target market — especially when this linguistic demographic is made of 19 countries.
The more we know about our audience, the better we can serve them. And, nowadays, there are so many tools to find out what people are interested in: geolocalized Google and Twitter trends, analytics, surveys but MAINLY people’s conversations in social media. Talking to people is sometimes under appreciated, but it’s so relevant to use our journalistic tools to discover more in market research, and to get some sense of how people think in different places.
Like CUNY professor Jeff Jarvis always says, we need to learn to be better listeners. When there is a buzz, something is going on underneath. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what exactly, because every language has its own logic, and it’s so difficult to think outside our own cultural frameworks. What might seem impolitically incorrect here, can be a smash hit somewhere else. What here is unimportant, could be big in other places. Also the other way around: I keep telling anecdotes about how things work differently in Argentina, and people are amused by details that are an everyday thing for me. Buenos Aires city mayor’s sayings about women liking to be catcalled in the street were a scandal back home, but in the U.S. this piece of news is even more shocking, as there is more awareness of sexual harassment.
If news were localized across countries we would be able to share more cultural knowledge, and to speak in global terms about what’s going on in other parts of the world. If the communication flow would run smoother — not only north-to-south or rich-to-poor as this Quartz graphic proves with the telephone industry — we would be able to tell our friends why something that struck us somewhere else is also relevant for us, who speak a different language. This new ecosystem would make online communication richer, including audiences that have been constantly left out because of the language barrier. This is the ultimate dream come true for the Internet, and its promise to make access and distribution more democratic.
And my social self would be so happy: I would be able to share this story in Spanish, French, German, Polish, and my friends would also share it.
Related articles:
Linguistic diversity on the web — Quartz
Writing the Web’s future in numerous languages — New York Times
Blog about language and linguistics — The Economist
Mariana Marcaletti (@mariamrom) is a Fulbright-sponsored Argentine journalist based in New York. She used to work at Google, managing the localization of products in Latin American Spanish. She built the crowdsourced site Latin American Radar, as a Tow Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism fellow at CUNY J-School. She worked at The Washington Post as a digital producer, and as a strategist in TN.com.ar. She produced for the BBC and wrote for The Independent and La Nación. Things that she’s interested in? All related to media, technology and language. Serial blogger, active Interneteur, social media fan, and addicted to talking, reading and writing.
