Najiba Kasraee
editor of the BBC Academy's language websites
Blog posts in total 19
Posts
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What’s the word for God in Bengali? A journalist’s linguistic balancing act
Bengali is one language with many variations that present BBC Bangla journalists with some hard choices. A BBC Academy website in Bengali aims to curate and update some of the linguistic sensitivities.
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Latest BBC Academy language sites focus on clarity as well as impartiality
The BBC Academy has this week launched three journalism training websites in Kinyarwanda, Kirundi and Uzbek
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BBC Academy’s Arabic website is ‘number-one training site in Middle East’
The BBC Academy's 15 journalism training websites in foreign languages have received some excellent feedback from round the world.
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BBC College of Journalism launches French, Hindi, Indonesian and Turkish sites
The BBC College of Journalism has launched four new websites, taking the number of its international language sites from 11 to 15.
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College of Journalism launches four more international language websites
At the core of each new website is language: how to ensure impartial and accurate language and the all-important art of translation.
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Impartiality in practice and the duty to say it straight
Journalists must not only write well and clearly, they must spot and avoid all those pitfalls of language that lie in wait for everyone.
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Impartiality and language in the world of Weibo
A two-day conference on impartial reporting will allow local media organisations, journalists and students to share best practice and avoid linguistic pitfalls, especially in the language of social media.
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College of Journalism launches four more language websites
The BBC College of Journalism is launching four new language sites: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Hausa and Urdu.
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What anyone can learn from the BBC guide to journalism in Persian
The language used in Persian media has always been relatively formal, as if presenters and journalists believe that the more formally they write and speak, the more sophisticated they will appear.
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Challenges for journalists in Egypt
The election in Egypt is not only an historic test for political democracy but a challenge for the Egyptian media in covering this unprecedented news event. The BBC College of Journalism, including its head, Jonathan Baker (above), has been supporting the BBC World Service Trust and the Arabi...
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How to present breaking news
One of the biggest challenges for any presenter is how to cope with breaking news - when the running order is abandoned and the presenter is asked to carry the programme, through an ever-changing situation. This can be an exciting opportunity but it's a daunting experience for a new presenter...
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Weibo: the Chinese Twitter
"I have around 300,000 followers and if I do not check my account for two weeks the number can drop by almost 50,000." This is what the Head of the BBC Chinese Service, Raymond Li, told me about his Micro Blog (in Chinese: Weibo) account. Micro Blog is the Chinese version of Twitter. It was cr...
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BBC College of Journalism launches new foreign-language websites
On my first day as a news presenter at the BBC World Service, I realised that, in order to produce and present an impartial, balanced and accurate report, in addition to journalistic training I badly needed to know the in-house style of my department: which Pashto word to use; which pronunciatio...
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Fruits of College of Journalism training can be seen on video
Feedback on CoJo's Essentials of BBC Journalism DVD has been arriving from all over the world. And there are already practical results to show for it. Training based on the DVD has been offered by BBC World Service instructors in India, Nigeria, Syria and Lebanon. In Lebanon, the trainer Maha...
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CoJo in Siberia
Together with the BBC Russian Service, we launched the Russian CoJo microsite almost a year ago. Since then, the site has been doing exactly what we were hoping for: developing its own material, attracting journalists from within and outside the BBC, and attracting large online student communiti...
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What the Afghan papers say
While the British media has covered President Obama and David Cameron's discussions about Afghanistan - among other subjects - exhaustively, they have shown less interest in a ground-breaking international conference organised by the Afghan government in Kabul this week. In the country it...
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New DVD explains Essentials of BBC Journalism
The BBC College of Journalism and Global News are proud to launch an Essentials of BBC Journalism DVD for all the Corporation's international reporters and stringers. This is an opportunity to share BBC learning - especially when access to the College website is difficult. (See the video introdu...
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Fluent journalese
I remember one of my first news shifts in the BBC World Service Pashto department. The instruction from the day producer was to translate some 74 lines into Pashto, my mother tongue. The story was written in simple and clear English, yet on many occasions my heart jumped: 'how do I translate thi...
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College of Journalism on the World Service
Language is a growing organism. And it is vital that journalists are aware of changes and developments. The BBC values - impartiality, accuracy and fairness - can only be guaranteed through the use of the correct language - whether that language is English or any other. Many languages i...