Language & Translations
working across multiple languages and cultures
This step is about working across languages and cultures, whether translating a story or reporting for audiences who speak different languages. Meaning, tone, and context all have to carry over. AI can translate quickly and at scale, so the question is where it helps you reach more people and where it might distort meaning or miss what matters locally.
Questions to explore
- How do you handle translation and reporting across languages today?
- Where do meaning, tone, or cultural context most often get lost in translation?
- Where could AI translation help you reach audiences you cannot serve now?
- How would you check that an AI translation is accurate and reads naturally to a native speaker?
- What kinds of stories or terms would you never hand to automatic translation?
Expert voices
“Localize materials for linguistic and cultural relevance. Language adaptation increases both adoption and ownership.”
“Translation and data processing technologies can bring journalism into native and local languages, making information accessible to indigenous communities and to people displaced to urban areas.”
“Building language datasets and keeping them separate from big tech lets African and Asian newsrooms work in their own languages, reaching audiences long excluded from news. Journalism becomes more representative.”
“If your community speaks a language AI supports poorly, combine available translation tools with human community reviewers. Sometimes simpler, rule-based tools work better than advanced AI for niche languages.”
Things to consider
- Machine translation can be fluent and still get the meaning wrong, so have a speaker review it.
- Tone and cultural context often need a person, not just a translation tool.
- Sensitive or high-stakes wording deserves human translation.
Pull Language & Translations when it is relevant and set it aside when it is not. Pair it with the other Journalism cards, lay them out on a table, and use the questions above to get everyone on the same page. Capture what you discuss on sticky notes or in a shared doc.
More Journalism cards
