«Global Voices has no competitors»: the rating of global info-sources

If I could make my own rating of global sources where any journalist from any country can find useful information it would be the following:

1. Facebook

2. Twitter

3. Global Voices

Maybe, in this list should be also GlobalPost, Ushahidi (a source useful for cooperation in covering disasters) and some other sources in English. But really global web-platforms that can give you full picture and deep analisys of what’s happening in other countries are not so numerous. Bernardo Parella, editor of Italian Global Voices says, answering my question about his personal ‘rating’, that they don’t have any competitors. Maybe, only GlobalPost. The problem is that so many young startup projects die without any finacial support. Global Voices, fortunately, has this support from some American NGOs that’s why it «doesn’t need ads to maintain the process – there are so many volunteers who make translations of interesting blogs for free». GV was created with a help of Creative Commons – as many other journalistic projects online (such as IFJ web-site).

Marc Herman, expert from the Translation Exchange Project forms his list of global sources of the so-called world brands – Guardian online, Google news and not so famous sites such as Compass.com.

Of course, it’s difficult to translate all the information into all languages and make it available in real time. However, we can see already many interesting bilingual and multilingual projects using both social and professional translations which were named during the panel:

1. GlobalLIVES.org project (here it’s possible to find translated into English videos from Serbia, India, China, Kazahstan, Russia etc.);

2. TEDtoChina – project of video translation into Chinese;

3. yeeyan.org (publish materials made in the United States and translated into Chinese);

4. translated by – project that concerns the countries of the former Soviet Union (in Latvian, Russian, Ukranian, Lithuanian languages).

If you would like to know more about life and really existing agenda in other countries – these sources can be also useful. The only thing you should do – to choose those whom you can trust.

Anna Leonova