▼
Clockwise
fromabove
Faisal
Abbas with Abdul
Rahman Al-
Rashed; the MBC
building in Dubai;
a screenshot of
the online
English-language
service with
machine-
generatedsubtitles
close relationship with the
assignment desk which is the
backbone of the operation. Theyʹve
got to know what stories we like.
What about user generated content?
We are not where we want to be in
Arabiya English. But I also donʹt
think UGC is the best thing since
the invention of the wheel. We all
remember the gay girl in Syria
blogger who turned out to be a
straight man in Scotland ‐ none of
the stories he wrote was true.
However, not all bloggers are liars
and some of their contributions are
very important.
In a situation like Syria where
you have a regime which is not
media friendly we do rely on a
large number of citizen journalists.
The UGC from Syria is principally
YouTube videos, and we have
dedicated people who monitor and
try to verify this content. There
always needs to be a filter – but
isnʹt that the case with any news
story you have? Even with stories
that come on the wires you
sometimes have to check against
another source.
Is there entertainment too?
We have a variety and
entertainment section on the
website where we talk about Arab
artists and fashion designers.
Entertainment is interesting. There
is a huge Arab arts and music
scene, and we want to share this
with English‐speaking audiences
too. That is part of understanding
the whole culture.
How do you market the website?
Through targeted events where
we invite people who are likely to
be interested – think‐tanks,
embassies, Arab organisations
based overseas, and the like. Itʹs
clearly different to marketing a
consumer brand because we are
targeting an elite specific audience.
And that makes it harder actually
because the standards of that
audience are much higher.
Tailoring something to a very
specific audience is a challenge.
We held two focus groups in
Washington and got insightful
feedback. They felt the service is
useful, in particular the subtitled
videos, the interviews and the
analysis, and commented on the
user friendliness of the website,
which is all feedback we take on.
How does the subtitling work?
There is this artificially intelligent
computer that has been listening
in to our broadcasts for two years.
It is actually very cool and we are
the first to use this technology in a
civilian broadcast context. The
machine showed us that most of
the time we use the same words –
things take a long time to get a
result in the Middle East, itʹs mostly
the same players going back and
forth with the same issues. The
machine is 95% accurate and we
have added a human layer of proof
readers to increase the accuracy,
but we say on the website that this
is a machine based translation thatʹs
designed to give you a direction.
Itʹs available within one hour of
broadcast and for the time being we
are doing four main bulletins a day
and five of our current affairs
shows. For example we provide the
translation for a show called
“Sena’t Al Mawt“ in Arabic (rough
translation in English is ʹDeath
Makingʹ). Itʹs a programme that
explores what goes on in the minds
of fundamentalist groups – how
does a teenager become a suicide
bomber? Itʹs partly documentary,
partly analysis.
The translation is accurate but of
course because it is machine‐
generated from a style perspective
it is not what you would read in a
newspaper. And donʹt forget, when
you interview people on TV, they
donʹt speak in classical Arabic in
grammatically correct sentences.
We try to tweak as much as we can.
For anybody who wants to hear the
news as soon as possible, this is a
very good way of getting access.
Thank you, Faisal Abbas.
THE CHANNEL
|
ISSUE 2 2013
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41
english.alarabiya.net
