Cross posted at The Smoking Room
If you’re a fan of the Middle East Media Research Institute and the translations of Middle Eastern press they do, you might appreciate a relatively new site that translates media all over the world into English:
The headline reads, “Columbus’ Discovery of America: History’s ‘Biggest Mistake.’ ” That might sound harsh to an American audience, but it’s less likely to ruffle Iraqis reading it in Arabic. Another zinger, this one from Tunisia, bluntly states, “The United States: a Country Beyond the Law.” A Mexican headline declares: “Time Near for Bush to Pay the Piper.” …
Robin Koerner, cofounder of the site, sees its value as one of opening minds.
“If I want to conduct any kind of relationship, even a personal relationship, I need to know how what I say and do affects the person on the receiving end,” he explains.
So what’s so powerful about this?
The distinction may seem subtle. But news organizations such as Al Jazeera put out different material for an English-speaking audience than for an Arabic-speaking audience. With this website, “you’re getting to see what, in some cases, your enemies are saying to each other in their own languages about you,” Koerner says. “That gives you insights which you cannot get from what they offer in English.”
Keep in mind next time you see a smooth-talking Al Jazeera editor on cable news or the Sunday morning shows that his network is saying very different things to its native-tongue audience. The translations are finding a small but influential crowd of 6,000, “an interesting ‘intellectual elite’ from think tanks and mainstream media, as well as regular check-ins from the US State Department and CIA, ‘because we’re doing some of their work for them,’ Koerner says dryly.”
But this snooty journalist-academic underestimates the value of the site, and especially American reactions:
But are Americans ready for a site like this? Mr. Tompkins of the Poynter Institute thinks not. “Americans are not incredibly open-minded about others who says critical things about America.” Koerner, however, thinks that since 9/11, more Americans are ready for introspection.
I think this site could have a much different effect: Showing Americans that regardless of how much money they lavish on the poor and sick around the world; no matter how much it gives the UN every year; regardless of the civil societies it is helping to build in war-torn, tyrannical societies, some abroad will still hate us for their own reasons.
Yes, the vanity of a wide spectrum of American thought – liberal, conservative, libertarian, green and everything in between – that the world only turns and burns because America is doing something. People in other countries have their own lives, beliefs, hopes, prejudices and fears quite apart from anything America has done, is doing or will do. Some will be deeply affected by American policy; some will only see it presented selectively on regional satellite TV. Far too many will be used as pawns by their governments and state-controlled media to bash America apart from any right to choose their leaders at the ballot box.
When every country on earth hates America and enjoys self-determination, it will be a day to celebrate.
I’m a tech journalist who’s making a TV show about a college newspaper.