Writing for readers around the world
At The Phillipian, we invest time and energy in creative ways to expand and engage our readership. For example, we have recently established new columns and series in print and online, and we have worked with targeted ad campaigns on Facebook and other social media platforms to maximize our click-through rate.
With all of our time spent sharing existing work and developing original features, however, we have somewhat forgotten that there is still more to be done with the raw content that we edit and publish every week. So what are some innovative ways that we can both expand and engage our readership?
Well, in a community with students from 44 countries and 44 states, and dozens of languages spoken, we need to stop assuming that English is the only and best way to reach members of the Andover community.
In conversations with American and international students alike, it has become clear that, while the expectation at Andover is that all students speak English, this is not always the case at home. Some students grow up in households which speak exclusively Spanish, Chinese, Korean, or many other languages. Parents and relatives in these families who do not read English should not be excluded from reading The Phillipian and how it reports on student life and events at Andover.
In this vein, we are excited to announce that, beginning this week, The Phillipian will commence a trial period in which we offer multilingual versions of select articles online. We will start with Mandarin Chinese, and we hope to incorporate additional languages such as Spanish and Korean based upon the success of this experiment.
We’ll be running Chinese articles through 飞利浦人—a phonetic translation of “The Phillipian” in Chinese as per below. So, be sure to check out 飞利浦人中文网 (The Phillipian in Chinese online)!
What’s in a name?
Like other publications such as “The New Yorker,” or “The Exonian” — our sister publication from Phillips Exeter — The Phillipian takes its name from a demonym for Phillips Academy students, sometimes referred to as “Phillipians.”
So, when brainstorming the naming of foreign language versions of The Phillipian, we had two goals:
- Find names that translated as demonyms.
- Maintain the phonetic pronunciation of “Phillipian” from English.
In Chinese, this proved to be pretty simple. A common phonetical translation for the English name “Phillip” is “飞利浦” (Fēilìpǔ). And, in Chinese, the word for “person”—“人” (rén) can be appended to a word or phrase to denote inhabitants of that place.
Though “Phillip” is a name and not a place, it represents the abstract of “Phillips Academy” as a location, and thus can be used as part of a demonym for Phillips Academy people. The translation of “The Phillipian” in English becomes “飞利浦人” (Fēilìpǔ rén) in Chinese — literally “Phillips people” (Chinese doesn’t have the concept of articles). Not only does this translation act as a demonym, but it also maintains a similar phonetic profile as its English counterpart.
