The Global Village

Wired News reports from The international Global Voices summit, under the headline "Bloggers shrink the planet":

"Once seen as primarily English, usually American, and often personal or geeky, the blogosphere today mostly resembles this room -- a noisy, transnational pastiche of culture and language. According to Technorati, English posts make up less than a third of all blogs today, while Chinese and Japanese blogging, for example, makes up 43 percent. This year, Global Voices began an ambitious, all-volunteer effort to translate selected Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Russian blog posts into English -- dramatically expanding the reach of those blogs... At a time when most news agencies are closing foreign desks and tightening budgets for global coverage, blogging provides a glimpse into the lives of others available nowhere else."