Exchanging words

MIDDLE EAST: If you are interested in the Middle East, but can't speak or write Arabic, you may find it nearly impossible to find out what people there are saying about the West. Help is on the way, in the form of a new website that translates news articles from Arabic into English, and vice versa.

Based in San Francisco, the non-profit site called Meedan, Arabic for “town square”, uses machine translation developed by IBM to translate texts. A team of 30 translators and editors then check the translations. Ed Bice, chief executive of Meedan, says that English-language news stories about the Middle East are commonly presented through the eyes of Western media. "We don't have a good way of seeing the media that's being written in Arabic and represents the way the region is understanding these events itself,” Bice told The Guardian.

Conversely, Bice adds, people in the Middle East may not be able to read what's being written about them in the West. “Outside of the news agencies like the BBC and al-Jazeera that are doing programming in two languages, Arabic speakers are unable to access information written in English," he says. “The goal is to provide more media exchange across both these languages.”

Ed Bice "We don't have a good way of seeing what's being written in Arabic."

Bice says that the site will avoid controversial subjects, instead aiming to provide an accurate version of news to as many people as possible. The people behind Meedan will be respectful of what can be spoken about, says Bice, who sees “dialogue and collaboration” as the key to increasing understanding between Arab and Western countries.