Paper still sets the agenda for newsreaders

According to a recent University of Oregon study, readers of the print edition of the New York Times recall more than readers of the online edition. The paper explores several theories for why print still rules, Jack Shafer reports in Slate:

Online newspapers tend to give few cues about a story's importance, and the "agenda-setting function" of newspapers gets lost in the process. "Online readers are apt to acquire less information about national, international and political events than print newsreaders because of the lack of salience cues; they generally are not being told what to read via story placement and prominence—an enduring feature of the print product," the researchers write. The paper finds no evidence that the "dynamic online story forms" (you know, multimedia stuff) have made stories more memorable.

English as she is spoke

I thought I was being terribly clever when I used that headline many years ago in an article to promote business English courses at a corporate university. I thought our Dutch readers were humourless or ignorant when they denounced our howling error. I've changed my tune a little since then. I try to respect our global audience by avoiding expressions that are too tribal or too idiomatic. I do damage control on the CEO's statement instead of editing his broken English into pitch-perfect prose. Most of the time, I think I find a good balance between local colour and readability. But is it authentic English?

BBC Online's recent series of rants about Americanisms, reported this week by The Economist, suggests that plenty of people have a tribal attachment to their own particular flavour of English. The suddenly popular www.samosapedia.com is a light-hearted clarion call to 1.5 billion South Asian users of the language formerly known as English. And Microsoft offers me no fewer than 18 standard variants to choose from – concerned, no doubt, that South African English would alienate my Zimbabwean readership.

Lingua franca

Authenticity is a thorny issue in our line of business. And if broken English is the lingua franca of the global economy, what is the added value of a business writer whose native language is British?

As a consumer, a basic command of the language is probably all you need to stay informed, place an order and use the customer support forum. But as a producer, settling for unwieldy English in your marketing and corporate communications more than likely erodes the credibility of your brand, and it's a missed opportunity to differentiate yourself.

Even if your readers are non-natives, chances are they're educated enough to recognise standard English when they see it. They'll probably understand your message better if it's crafted by a communicator with a full mastery of the tools of the trade. And when they compare your home-grown efforts with your native-English competitors, I bet their perception of your company – your eye for detail, your project management skills, your quality control – will be downgraded a notch.

The ROI of standard spelling

Online entrepreneur Charles Duncombe says an analysis of website figures shows a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half because of consumer concerns about a website's credibility.

"You get about six seconds to capture the attention on a website," says Mr Duncombe. And in that short space of time, apparently, you can send potential consumers rushing for the door.

Just imagine how much damage you could do in six seconds with a B2B website in a language other than your own! When you're fighting for attention and trust, 'good enough' could be counterproductive.

Google shuts down its translation API

Asia Online CEO Dion Wiggins gives an excellent informed analysis of Google's decision to shut down its translation API and improve its control over content quality. He says Google in reality has been "polluting its own drinking water by crawling and processing local language web content that has been published without any human proof reading after being translated using the Google Translate API."

Part II of the analysis, including the impact of the decision on the professional translation industry, can be found here.

Growth is overrated

Where have I been all these months? Spending too much time following language industry trends, which can make it sound as if we're all out to machine-translate as much low-grade content into as many languages as possible.

"Now that it's so beneficial to offer a service to just a few, with focus and attention,"says Seth Godin, "perhaps we need to rethink the very goal of scale." Time to focus on what we do, which is pamper a few important documents for a few clients in a few languages at a time.