Journey to the Center of the Earth

One fact is evident to anyone who has attempted to use Google Translate for anything more than a word or, at most, a short phrase: at best, it lacks precision. This shortcoming is hardly the fault of the designers behind such programs. Far from it - translating text or speech of any significant complexity almost invariably leads to a distortion or even a loss of much of the intended meaning. This occurs for a variety of reasons. Firstly, languages do not always follow a one-to-one correspondence structure. Even in the case of English, which boasts an exceptionally extensive vocabulary as far as languages go, there still exists in other languages a countless number of words with no direct translation into English. The classic example of this phenomenon is the German word schadenfreude . Google translates this word as "malicious joy", a rather clunky attempt at conveying the rough meaning of the term. Indeed, schadenfreude  has made its way into the English vocabulary as a l...

"People have a need to know. Journalists have a right to tell. Finding the facts can be difficult. Reporting the story can be dangerous. Freedom includes the right to be outrageous. Responsibility includes the duty to be fair. News is history in the making. Journalists provide the first draft of history." One highlight of my recent trek up the East Coast was stopping in Washington, D.C., home of many of the nation's great museums. One such museum is the Newseum, which, as the name implies, hosts a large number of news-related exhibitions, which include a Pulitzer Prize photographs hall, a First Amendment gallery and a 9/11 memorial. One exhibition that I found to be of particular relevance to global affairs was the Time Warner World News Gallery, dedicated to shedding light on how free speech (or the lack thereof) dictates the struggles of journalists around the world. The gallery features an interactive map (similar to this one  by Reporters Without Borders) that d...