Using Google Translate for Periodismo Ciudadano

Grace D and I have been emailing back and forth about a Spanish blog that picked up our posts on the Mexico Earthquake and Citizen Journalism. We saw the links to the blog "periodismociudadano.com" but initially could not read it until it was translated. I enjoyed my private Spanish lessons many years ago to prepare for business trips to Mexico and Spain. I don't know if it is my mommy memory or just the amount of time but I have forgotten my Spanish.

So, I used Google Translate to help me translate the posting from Spanish to English. It is very easy:

• OPTION 1 TRANSLATE A WEB PAGE: This is the link to the Google translate page. I entered the URL for the site I wanted translated in the " Translate a Web Page" field and choose "Spanish to English" in the language drop down. Here is a link to the translated page. The translated URL is very long, so if you want to Twitter or email it out, the "tinyurl" page can create a smaller URL to send out (here is mine http://tinyurl.com/27562m ).

• OPTION 2: TRANSLATE TEXT: The field above that is for translating particular text (Translate Text). I used that to translate the name of the blog "periodismociudadano.com" or periodismo ciudadano which I found out is "citizen journalism".

I was doing this at 11pm at night, sitting in my pajamas reading an amazing Spanish language blog on citizen journalism. The comments/discussion about citizen journalism after the post were so engaging.  I decided to look for a place I can find listings of other foreign language blogs to read. I had the opportunity to travel to world for business, now I can see what interesting people from around the world are thinking, while I am sitting in my pajamas. No business travel required.

Relevant Links:
For those who use Yahoo mail, there is also a translation tool that can be used from Yahoo called Babel Fish. Both Google Translate and Babel Fish are free.

Translation sites can be helpful for to use with your kids for school projects. But be careful, you don't want to give them an easy way to cheat on their Spanish homework.