Online journalists need multi-language skills

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Rather than expecting the world to adopt English as the international
language of web news, publishing could begin to demand multi-lingual web
journalists, according to researchers at the UK's University of Warwick.
"Obviously publishers need to balance what is local and what is global news,
but our initial hypothesis is that translation can be a way of maximising
markets," said Dr Joy Sisley, lecturer and research fellow for the
Translation in Global News project at the University of Warwick. The project
was established in 2003 to explore the role of translation in the production
of global news. Translation presents significant technical problems for web
publishers. As well as translating the meaning of the text, multi-language
sites must be able to present different alphabets and formatting
conventions. News publishers are often deterred from publishing news in
multiple languages because of the cost. Automated translation tools do not
yet provide accurate enough results, which means that news must still be
manually translated. "Within big news organisations, there is often the view
that translation is too important to leave to translators - they prefer to
employ multi-lingual journalists," said Dr Sisley.

Source:
http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story843.shtml