US website depicts foreign press coverage of America
WatchingAmerica.com is a website dedicated to showing Americans how their country is reported on in the foreign press. The site is edited by William Kern, former copy editor for the International Herald Tribune, and provides translations of interesting stories sourced from newspapers and broadcasts in Europe, The Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
No commentary is provided for any of the translated articles as the aim of the site is to be politically neutral.
Kern and his business partner British entrepreneur Robert Koerner view their site as responding to the growing interest among Americans in their country's image abroad. Kern says “With bookstores selling accounts of the anger that people of other nations feel toward the United States, the time seemed right to produce daily translations straight from overseas sources.”
The importance of translating articles from foreign sources is highlighted by Koerner, who asserts that there is a "key distinction" between information published in English by foreign media, and stories written in native languages. Koerner uses the following example: "What the Arabic press puts out for their home audience is very different from what they might publish for English-speaking readers.”
WatchingAmerica.com is a sort of personal crusade for Kern, he says: "It needs to be done, and we're doing it. In the period of history that we're living in now, it's so important to break the language barrier."
Source: Times Argus
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