BBC Academy launches four new language websites

The BBC Academy’s College of Journalism has launched Burmese, Pashto, Swahili and Vietnamese websites that aim to provide a resource to journalists around the world in maintaining standards while dealing with the nuance and detail of language.

The websites focus on three main areas: BBC values, language and journalistic skills. They cover television, radio and online production; presentation, writing, and social media; and also aim to support journalists in the need to produce and present multiplatform programmes under the pressure of tight deadlines.

The sites’ language categories all have bespoke illustrations reflecting the specific culture and target audience.

Najiba Kasraee, the BBC College of Journalism editor for international websites, says: “The aim of these sites is to put BBC Global News language services’ in-house style on record and, as part of BBC public purposes, to share the resource with journalists around the world.”

These latest four language sites bring the number of College of Journalism re-launched sites to 11, including Arabic, Chinese in Simplified form, Chinese in Traditional form, Hausa for Nigeria, Persian, Russian, and Urdu for Pakistan. In the last five years, the BBC College of Journalism has created 27 language sites in total, all of which are free to audiences around the world.

The College will be launching four more websites in summer 2014 in French, Hindi, Indonesian and Turkish.