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Sunday, April 27, 2008

HELLO! SAYS GOODBYE TO ENGLISH

Just six weeks ago I wrote about the Thai language edition of Hello! introducing an English language translation supplement into the magazine. This was an English translation of the locally written Thai stories, and although some of the English wasn't perfect it did make interesting reading.
It seems this idea has died. I've seen the last two editions of this fortnightly magazine and neither have included the English translations. I don't know the reasons why but my guess it that it was an additional production cost that didn't really result in any additional readers. What do you think?

2 comments:

David 7:41 PM  

This is a good example of why Thai magazines and newspapers translate articles from english publications without attribution. Media in Thailand runs on a razor thin margin, and the cost of translation from Thai to English is something that is far more difficult than English to Thai, and therefore more expensive.

If Thai media outlets were forced to pay for their foriegn content, I would imagine that nearly half of the publications would simply disappear.

(c) 2016 Written by Andrew Batt 6:55 AM  

You are correct David, but I would say that 90% of Thai publications would disappea if they had to pay market rates for the content they steal from overseas publications and websites.
Right now I am dealing with four copyright infringements by Stock Exchange-listed publishing companies. If these guys can't act professionally then who can?

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