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How’s your Anglophone reception?
Hollywood raises the bar on ethnic authenticity
Culture is a minefield. Tread carefully.
Five words that should be imported into English
The blogosphere across different hemispheres
What’s the meaning of green in Greenland?
Lost in Translation: Strange signs from abroad
When your translator is truly checked out…
Beware of Slippy: For Shanghai, Chinglish is no laughing matter
Lost in Translation: Verizon Wireless
How well do you know your target market?
Is Twitter ready to go global?
In India, Microsoft and Google go local in a big way
It’s Miller Time in North Korea
Global road warriors: learn to fit it all in one bag
In China: All atwitter about microblogging
Does Crowdsourcing have a Place in the Translation Industry?
The Era of Open Standards is here
Translation Tools Without Borders
Content Convergence: Come Together Write Now
Beijing’s Olympic Task: Serving Up Gold-Medal English
How well do you know your target market?
By Prisma News
Category:
A key aspect of our work at Prisma is helping clients grasp the intricacies of their target markets in other cultures (here in the U.S. or abroad). However, the work of understanding any market is as much about unlearning as it is about learning. One has to clear out preconceptions in order to make room for new and more accurate perspectives. Two recent finds help illustrate this – and in two very different ways:
How Not to Write About Africa
In this 3-minute video, Binyavanga Wainaina takes on many of the typical depictions of Africa in Western media.
Saudi Women in Focus
This Time Magazine slide show describes “the changing role of women in Saudi Arabia.” Perhaps putting a finer point on things, Sociological Images described it as “a set of photographs that counter the frequent representations of Saudi women as (veiled) and downtrodden.”
There are probably many reasons why we are perpetually plagued by false or unreliable perceptions of other cultures. But according to Public Radio International’s Alisa Miller, you don’t have to look very far to find the culprit. She points out that in February 2007, 79% of all network and cable news coverage in the U.S. was about…the U.S. Excluding coverage of Iraq (which could arguably be described as U.S.-related news), it’s shocking to learn that Russia, China and India enjoyed less than 1% of all news coverage.
