DON’T read this if you have work to do today! Rather keep it for the weekend. Now that I have given you a fair warning, I can tell you about a really novel website I came across.
If you are someone who love to keep up to date with the latest news and events Newspapermap.com is just for you. This free service is a visual map with thousands of newspaper links.
You can click on various of the tags on the map and a small block will pop-up with the name of the newspaper. You may think that this is a great way to browse newspapers from around the world, but it gets better than that. On the map the newspapers are colour-coded according to the language of the publication.
You are probably thinking that you will only be able to read some of the newspapers from a small number of languages that you can read, but not to worry. In the pop-up that you click you will get a list of language options. The creators of the map also included Google Translate into the service. You can now read foreign language newspapers from around the world in English. It does however not stop there, after you click on your language option and the newspaper website opens you will see at the top of the page a Google Translate bar, you can also select Afrikaans as one of the language options.
Yes, you can also read Norwegian or Greek newspapers in Afrikaans each and every day.
If you love staying up to date with international affairs then this site is for you! So after you are finished with Bloemnews head on over to http://www.newspapermap.com.
. Nico Baird is a new media expert and can be contacted at nico@clicksa.co.za