NYTimes addresses Russian readers
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NYTimes addresses Russian readers
Something new, at least to me . Together with today's article in the New York
Times At Expense of All Others, Putin Picks a Church, there's a sidebar:
Russian Readers
Speak Out
A translation of this article is being discussed on a Russian-language blog run by The New York Times. English-speaking readers can respond to translated highlights of that conversation or share their thoughts on the article.
Join the conversation. »
I think that's neat.
Of course you'd have to be reading the NYT in English to start with, or be
alerted by a friend. But it's the first case I know of one of the major American
newspapers making an actively non-English-only presence. (But is it really
starting with Russian rather than, say, Spanish, or does this just reflect the
fact that I pay more attention to their news about Russia?)
Bruce Rusk said,
April 24, 2008 @ 8:13 am
This is not the first time: the Times has done this with Chinese readers as well. Last year, their series on environmental issues in China was published along with a Chinese translation:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/08/26/world/asia/choking_on_growth.html
I seem to recall their soliciting responses from readers in China, though I don't see them on that page.
Reader said,
April 24, 2008 @ 11:27 am
In fact, this is not even the first time they've done this with Russian readers; the article about the Orthodox church is the second in a series. The Times set up the Russian-language blog for the first piece, several weeks ago, about the difficulties faced by the Russian opposition. The blog features Russian translations of the Times pieces (to call them "careless" or "awkward" would be kind – but you could certainly say the same about the English translations of Russian readers' comments) as well as – this is a recent development – links to articles in the Russian press, e.g. Izvestiya.
Patrick Hall said,
April 26, 2008 @ 2:17 am
Here's to the power of Unicode… thanks to its existence, an English publication can publish translations in Russian and Chinese with the same software.
Eric said,
April 29, 2008 @ 3:13 am
Not the NYTimes. But back in 1999 (and I don't know — 1998 as well? 2000?) the _Boston Globe_ would regularly run a full-length Spanish-language article whenever Pedro Martinez started a home game. Not a translation of the English-language article on the game, although of course it covered the same material.