Cyprus-Forum.com

[cannedmoose]

All those of you interested in reading perspectives from both sides of the Green Line, this may well be a day to mourn. For those of us who are barely bilingual, let along trilingual, CyprusMediaNet (http://www.cyprusmedianet.com) was an invaluable resource which allowed us to read articles from newspapers on both sides, from Simerini to Fileleftheros and Volkan to Afrika.

I recently noticed that the articles which are normally posted daily had not been updated since the New Year, so I emailed Dr. Dimitris Apostolidis at CyprusMediaNet to see why this is the case. Apparently they have been forced to suspend operations pending additional funding being made available. Their funding is derived from USAID and the UNDP and comes through UNOPS.

I am not affiliated in any way with CyprusMediaNet, I am a mere academic trying to get to grips with the Cyprus problem and this site was a fantastic way of reading perspectives from all quarters in Cyprus.

As a forum, I would encourage all of you to individually email UNOPS in Cyprus to get this site back online. Maybe this could be an example of bicommunal people-power in action. It's your choice folks, let's not lose a genuinely valuable vehicle from cross-community communication.

You can email UNOPS at [email protected]

Many thanks all,

cannedmoose

[brother]

My e-mail is on its way.

[insan]

I've just sent my e-mail to them. It was really an excellent site which helped me a lot to broaden my perspective over the issues related with GC community.

[MicAtCyp]

As a forum, I would encourage all of you to individually email UNOPS in Cyprus to get this site back online. Maybe this could be an example of bicommunal people-power in action. It's your choice folks, let's not lose a genuinely valuable vehicle from cross-community communication.

No I will not e-mail anyone knowing that this site was run for profit, was sucking more than $200,000 a year from Unops, their translations from Turkish to Greek were so bad that made no sense, and they were very selective on what they were translating.

[-mikkie2-]

I personally found the site limited considering the amount of money that was spent in running it.

I also did find that many translations were badly written. You would read a sentence in english and quite a few times it would not make any sense. I suspect that much of the translation was automated and with a person doing a quick proof read. It really does make one ask where the $200000 was spent.

I would encourange the TC and GC press to provide english versions of their web sites. I know that the GC press websites are very good and provide a wealth of information and knowing that many people in Cyprus have an excellent grasp of english, it would not take too much effort to have a minimum number of articles translated.

[Piratis]

Probably they were translating first from Greek to English and then from English to Turkish (and vice versa) and this is why many things were lost in the translation.

I would encourage the TC and GC press to provide english versions of their web sites.

You need to convince them that this would be something profitable for them. Right now the online articles are the articles published in the newspapers. If they have to make translations this will require additional funds that need to be justified. (and in business "justified" means money in a direct or indirect way)

Such service is good and can be done in one of two ways:
1) Volunteers
2) Sponsors (money)

Any of you willing to volunteer or sponsor such thing?

[-mikkie2-]

There shouldn't be a need to convince!

It makes sense for them economically also because an online version in English will mean that the papers will get known internationally and this could bring in more advertising. It will also be a boon to those GC's and TC's that don't speak their mother tonge to be able to catch up on the news in Cyprus from different sources. You will be surprised how many GC's can hardly read Greek here in the UK, even though they may speak it!

[brother]

Absolutely true mikkie and the same goes for tc in u.k