As you know, I fully agree that the multilingual nature of the Internet is very important and (too) often ignored. One thing that I have been thinking a lot about recently is the crossover of concerns from the translation side (issues such as equivalence , fidelity, liberal vs. free translation) and concerns from the journalism side (impartiality, factual correctness, etc.). Put those two together in the hands of one person and you’re asking a lot: both fact-checking *and* language correspondence, not to mention subject specialization etc.

I think in fact it’s too much to ask of a single individual (blogger/journalist or translator), or even of a small loosely-knit group. I also think that while MT is touted as a solution, when you’re talking about news stories where every word counts, MT is at best an aid, at worst an invitation for misrepresentation and confusion.

The essence of question as I see it is this: how can people organize online around important stories in efficient ways, so as to convey the facts of the news as well as the subtleties of the language in which the news is expressed?