JOUR

2722 - SOCIAL MEDIA AND JOURNALISM

ASSESSMENT THREE







How Translation Application Bridge Could impact on the Practice of Journalism
Kaikane Ray Hayes
JOUR 2722 - Social Media and Journalism
University of Queensland

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page




Table of Contents


Table of Figures



Report






Introduction



Stages of Development


Design and User Experience

Case Studies



The Future of Bridge in Journalism

Conclusion



Reference List

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TABLE OF FIGURES

Figure 1
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Figure 7

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Introduction
Translation application Bridge has the potential to transform the way news is reported
across different languages in a real-time environment (Lichterman, 2015). Bridge allows
users to translate public Twitter and Facebook posts, and see translated posts, in close to
real-time (Sifry, 2015). This paper will discuss the the advantages and disadvantages within
the applications design. Case studies will then be analysed to detail situations where the
application could have a groundbreaking contribution to the practice of journalism.

Stages of Development
The application is currently in beta stage of development, meaning only approved users can
download it (Bridge, 2015). However, the ways in which the application could contribute to
the practice of journalism are already being demonstrated. Currently, it is only being
constructed for use on apples iOS, with a planned release date sometime this month
(Lichterman, 2015). Developers have expressed interest in opening up Bridge to Android
devices at a later stage (Lichterman, 2015). There is currently a desktop viewer available for
certain topics, along with developer-supplied screenshots. However, as a result of the
limited release, there is no analytics data that is publicly available, therefore this paper
cannot discuss specific figures such as take-up of the application.

Bridge is being developed by the for-profit wing of Meedan (Lichterman, 2015). Meedan
says Bridge will be free to download and use, but there are hopes to further monetise the
application through potential incentive models (Lichterman, 2015). Edward Bice, Meedans
chief executive officer, detailed one way in an online article, writing:

A journalist who is breaking a news story and needs an immediate translation can
query the network with a request for translation (Lichterman, 2015).

Design and User Experience
From the content thats currently available, it appears the app is designed to primarily work
with Twitter. As shown in Figure 1, translators must first link the application to their Twitter
account (Bridge, 2015), possibly to counter the potential negative effects of online
anonymity.
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Figure 1

When users locate a post to work on, a service will automatically

attempt to decipher the text into a desired language (Lichterman,
2015). Users can then either choose to keep or build on what is
generated, as seen in Figure 2. To build on the text, the user can
edit it directly, or add annotations such as providing an
explanation for a phrase (Lichterman, 2015).

As seen in Figure 5, users can provide further translations to
contradict or strengthen previous attempts. Others are then able
to up-vote and down-vote these explanations as a crowd-sourced
measure of accuracy (Lichterman, 2015). Furthermore, trusted
translators will be given a special badge and more prominence on
the application.

Figure 2

The translations are added to a pool of topics organised
through Bridges original and translated key words
(Lichterman, 2015). Users are also able to follow these
conversations, similar to Twitters search function. Figure 6
demonstrates this through a search of Spanish-English
translated tweets on the US Republican Party presidential
debates. In addition, Users can embed the original and
translated tweet on a website to share individual
translations. Content can also be shared on Twitter feeds
through a TT header or with a screenshot attachment
(Eunice, 2015). This is demonstrated in Figure 7.

Figure 3

Case Studies
The journalistic potential for Bridge can be analysed through two recent case studies. In
2013, media attention turned to Egypt for the opening of the New Suez Canal (Mina,
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Figure 5
Figure 4
Figure 5

2015). Western media largely focused on covering social media posts that were written in
English (Lichterman, 2015). On the same day, Bridge developers decided to undertake the
apps first major trial, translating Arabic posts into English. While they found some tweets
containing praise for the new canal, there was a raft of satirical posts that were ignored by
western media (Mina, 2015).

Furthermore, translation apps such as Google do not recognize tone or context, leading to
potential mistranslations. For example, when TV star Kim Kardashian tweeted the pope is

Figure 6

dope, an Argentinian writer incorrectly assumed the singer was associating the pope with
drugs (Bruno, 2015). This resulted in a patriotic article defending the pope that was also
scathing of Kardashian (Bruno, 2015). On Bridge, the tone and context would likely be
picked up on by at least one user, saving the journalist from embarrassment.

As demonstrated through the first case study, when journalists only report on the reactions
of one community, this can create a misrepresentation of the wider societys views. It is
often taught in journalism to report on a variety of perspectives and voices (Soffer, 2009).
Due to the app being unreleased, it is difficult to assess the experience of journalists and
media organisations that are utilizing the app. However, academics have been keen to
highlight the potential of the application to improve the aforementioned issues.

Figure 7

The future of Bridge in Journalism
Harvard Universitys journalism publication, NiemanLab, featured an article on the
application and hinted that it could be used to further cover issues such as the European
debt fallout or politics in Mexico (Lichterman, 2015). Former press freedom director at
FressPress.net, Josh Stearns, also linked to Bridge with a positive outlook. Stearns said he
was pleased to see articles on multilingual reporting, something that is a critical part of
how the journalists engage, feature and reach diverse audiences (Stearns, 2015). This is
clearly something Bridge will assist with, if journalists choose to use it.

From experience, the desktop reader is user-friendly. By integrating the service with Twitter,
the viewer can see which tweets in a different language are doing well based on their
retweets and favourites. Many deficiencies usually experienced in Google Translate were
gone, however difficulties with verification may be a trade-off. The main beneficial feature
is the additional explanations. Several translated tweets contained slang, inside references
or unfamiliar phrases. Translators with local cultural knowledge were a necessity in order to
ensure the full extent of meaning within the tweet. However, there are downsides to the
application. Whilst the developers claim Bridge will work with Facebook content, there is no
evidence of this. As all translated text and screenshots on the desktop viewer were taken
from Twitter, As Facebook has 1.1 billion more active monthly users than Twitter
(McCarthy, 2014), it is essential that developers integrate Facebook to provide greater
contribution towards good journalism practice than Twitter posts alone.

Conclusion
In conclusion, it is foreseeable that Bridge can achieve Meedans goal of a cross-lingual
internet, dependent on the integration of two frequently used social media sites, Twitter
and Facebook. The success of Bridge also rests on those who contribute to the translations;
if translations are found to be misleading then Bridge will gain a reputation of being
unreliable. However, if translations are deemed accurate in tone and context as well as the
actual word translation, Bridge has the potential to become a useful resource for journalists
across the globe.











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REFERENCES
Bice, E. (2015, July 1). 21,000 Miles of Translating Social Media [Web log message].
Retrieved from https://medium.com/meedan-labs/21-000-miles-of-translating-
social-media-9b8be45bc323

Bridge. (2015). Retrieved from https://twitter.com/speakbridge

Bridge,. (2015). Bridge Reader (Beta) | Guatemala Makes History Project. Retrieved 9
October 2015, from https://speakbridge.io/medias/embed/guatemala-makes-history
Bruno, A. (2015). A dope pope: Kim Kardashian tweet causes minor outrage in
Argentina. The Guardian. Retrieved from
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/24/kim-kardashian-pope-tweet-
argentina-dope
Eunice, L. (2015). Bridge Reader (Beta) | Guatemala Makes History Project. Speakbridge.io.
Retrieved 9 October 2015, from https://speakbridge.io/medias/embed/guatemala-
makes-history/GuateHaceHistoria/190
Hackett, C. (2015, August 24). More than 90% of students in Europe study English [Online
Twitter post]. Retrieved from
https://twitter.com/conradhackett/status/635513587910348800

Holmes, C. (2015). Marikana in translation: Print nationalism in South Africa's multilingual
press. African Affairs, 114(455), 271-294. Retrieved from
http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/content/114/455/271.full

Knight, M. & Cook, C. (2013). Social media for journalists: Principles & practice. London UK.
SAGE Publications.

Lichterman, J. (2015, August 31). Tweeting across borders: With a new mobile app, Meedan
is working to improve social media translation. Nieman Lab. Retrieved from

http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/08/tweeting-across-borders-with-a-new-mobile-
app-meedan-is-working-to-improve-social-media-translation/

Macale, S. (2011, November 8). Study shows Bings language translation on Facebook is
highly inaccurate. The Next Web News. Retrieved from
http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/11/08/study-shows-bings-language-
translation-on-facebook-is-highly-inaccurate/

McCarthy, N. (2014). Facebook Versus Twitter In Numbers. Forbes Business. Retrieved from
http://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2014/10/14/facebook-versus-twitter-
infographic/
Meedan. (2015). Bridge: Translate quickly and accurately. Retrieved from
https://meedan.com/bridge/

Mina, A. (n.d.). When the big one hits, whose voices will be heard? [Web log message].
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voices-will-be-heard-3baf1fa4da7a

Mina, A. (2015, August 13). #Egypt_Delights: A Suez Canal Hashtag Largely Missed by
English-Speaking Media [Web log message]. Retrieved from
https://medium.com/meedan-labs/egypt-delights-a-suez-canal-hashtag-largely-
missed-by-english-speaking-media-c5f13b84647c

Sifry, M. (2015, September 1). Stretches. Civic Tech News and Analysis. Retrieved from
http://civichall.org/civicist/stretches/

Soffer, O. (2009). The competing ideals of objectivity and dialogue in American journalism.
Journalism, 10(4), 473-491. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1464884909104950
Stearns, J. (2015). Local Fix: Resources for Local News, National Partnerships and
Multilingual Reporting. TinyLetter. Retrieved 9 October 2015, from

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http://tinyletter.com/jcstearns/letters/local-fix-resources-for-local-news-national-
partnerships-and-multilingual-reporting

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