How did we ever exist before the internet? I’ve been having tremendous problems with my internet connection. Among other things, it has meant that I haven’t been able to add any new entries to this blog for over a week.
And I was itching to share newspapermap.com with you.
As so often happens, I can’t remember where I first heard about newspapermaps – maybe I stumbled upon it on one of those days when I had time to look through the ‘for later’ bookmarks on my computer.
Anyway, it is a gem! It works like google maps in that the start up page shows you a world map with pins pointing to the location of the newspapers. The pins are colour coded showing the language the newspapers are written in. There are nine different languages labelled separately. English has by far the largest share of newspapers, with Spanish, French, Portuguese and German following on.
The reason I like this site is like many other websites for a mixture of personal and professional reasons. I was delighted to be able to take a quick look at the Sunderland Echo – my local newspaper where I grew up. I hadn’t seen it for years.
And for classes, it could have endless uses – accessing articles on the same theme and comparing how the story is treated or focused. At lower levels, this could be in terms of how much space the story is given on a page and whether photos are used or not. At higher levels, the actual language used (for example, level of formality, use of passives, use of nouns versus verbs….)
And I have just tried out the translation tool on the Sunderland echo (by clicking on ‘español’ in the translation option)
ARTISTA Alison Barratt ha conseguido un papel de trabajo para la ciruela, el alcalde de Londres.
I deliberately hadn’t looked at the newspaper in English first, so didn’t have a clue what was meant by ‘working for the plum’.
Compare this to the original headline and first sentence:
ARTIST Alison Barratt has landed a plum role working for the Lord Mayor of London.
Thank goodness that we still need humans to translate and to teach!
Hope you enjoy this link and why not share your ideas for using it with students?
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