NH News now offers the possibility to read articles in Ukrainian. Exactly one year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, North Holland has a growing Ukrainian community, and therefore an increasing demand for stories about and for Ukrainian refugees. Translating articles is a logical development in this day and age, says Professor of Media Studies Mark Deuze.
Читайте цю статтю повністю українською від сьогодні, in other words: ‘read this article completely in Ukrainian from today’. This option was already available to the interested Spanish and Turkish inhabitants of North Holland, but from now on it is also available to the Ukrainian community.
The editors of NH Nieuws see a growing Ukrainian community in the region and consider it important that they too can follow the news from North Holland. For example, NH Gooi wrote a number of times about the Ukraine reception in Hilversum last year, but the stories hardly reached the refugees themselves.
The Ukrainian Rymma Kadomets and Natalia Tckachenko react positively to the news that the news is now also available in their own language. “How fantastic”, Tckachenko says surprised in her own restaurant on the Gijsbrecht van Amstelstraat in Hilversum. Both Tckachenko and Kadomets fled Ukraine after the Russian invasion on February 24, exactly one year ago today.
Integration through media
Mark Deuze, professor of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam, sees an ‘important and essential role’ for journalism. “By offering our work in different languages, you help with integration. The most important way in which refugees orient themselves in a new society is through the media.”
The professor calls the translation of articles a logical development in this day and age. “We live in a global society. The whole world is intertwined in the Netherlands, just as it is in most other countries. There has long been a good argument for journalism to orient itself more internationally.”
According to Deuze, the news does not only concern the Dutch or Hilversum residents, but everyone. “If you look at the headlines in the newspaper or the themes in the news, they are almost always themes that cross borders. The share price, the refugee problem, the climate, all things that do not care about national borders.”
Fallible algorithm
NH News articles are translated using artificial intelligence. Flawless Ukrainian articles are therefore not expected. When changing the language, this text appears at the top right of the article: ‘The original article was made in Dutch by our editors. This article has been automatically translated by an algorithm and may therefore contain errors’.
Still, Deuze thinks this is the best possible option for now. “There is a lot of discussion about AI, but in such a case it solves a time-consuming and expensive task.”