Can mainstream US media tap into non-English audiences?

[Commentary] When the New York Times’s series investigating the nail salon industry, “Unvarnished,” went viral in May, the criminally low wages and health problems suffered by manicurists weren’t the only story. National and international media reported that the Times’s website published the stories in Korean, Chinese, and Spanish translation -- a first for the paper. To the English-language press, translations may present an opportunity to better serve diverse communities and to tap into new audiences in an increasingly multicultural America and globalized world.

Perhaps the increased focus on translations of individual stories is a sign of a new awareness among publishers that non-English speakers are not just the subjects of stories but members of an audience with shared interests. Colleen Cotter, associate professor in media linguistics at Queen Mary University of London, hopes that’s the case. “There’s a monolingual mindset in the US,” she says. “Journalists should know more about how complicated the language history in the US has always been, and that there are many ways of producing media in different languages -- although it does come with challenges.” While big organizations like the New York Times can most easily afford to systematically translate stories, further experiments by smaller publications could lead to more cost-effective methods -- and maybe even to new ways of thinking about story reach and audiences.