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NJ News Commons Spanish Translation News Service

A statewide collaborative meant to increase the amount of quality statewide news available to Spanish-language news audiences

In July 2022, the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University launched a flagship collaborative translation project with Spanish-language news media and the largest general market news outlets in New Jersey called the NJ News Commons Spanish-language Translation News Service (STNS). 

The goal of STNS is to help mitigate the barriers and fill the widening information gap for Latinos in the state based on the Center’s research and coverage needs identified by Spanish-language publications that serve this growing population. This translation service also builds on the Center’s partnership with ethnic and community media across the state to translate important news content over the past six years.

The project is currently in its third year with 14 partners—seven English-language and seven Spanish-language publications in the state. Each week the project manager selects up to five stories originally produced in English and various formats (text, photographs, video, and multimedia) by statewide media partners for translation. Then these translated articles are immediately sent to Spanish-language media outlets that are part of the project for use on their platforms.

The project also creates a weekly recap of all translated and republished stories and shares it with partners on Friday afternoon. 

The Center works with STNS partners to combine resources and ensures that first-hand information—including breaking and in-depth stories or news-that-you-can-use about health, housing, immigration, economy, election, and the environment, among other topics— is accessible and available to Spanish-language news organizations for the greater good of the Latino communities in the state.  

Most Spanish-language news organizations based in New Jersey serve local audiences and often do not have the staff to chase developments coming out of Trenton or statewide breaking news that affects all New Jerseyans. This resource exchange in the form of Spanish translations allows Spanish-language publications to get news to their audiences that they might not otherwise have been able to share.

Nuanced Spanish translations are crucial to mitigate language barriers and narrow information gaps in the Latino immigrant community, from a cultural and linguistic standpoint. As the translation initiative gets off the ground and grows, it will create relationships between the mainstream news partners and the Spanish-language news outlets, relationships that could bear other fruit.

Republication rules

The following tagline must be applied to the end of all translated text that is part of the News Service:

This translation was provided by [insert translator name] in association with the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University and is supported with funding from the NJ Civic Information Consortium. The story was originally written in English by [originating news org] and is being republished under a special content-sharing agreement through the NJ News Commons Spanish Translation News Service.

Esta traducción fue proporcionada por [insertar el nombre del traductor] en asociación con el Centro de Medios Cooperativos de la Universidad Estatal de Montclair, y cuenta con el apoyo financiero del Consorcio de Información Cívica de NJ. La historia fue escrita originalmente en inglés por [originating news org] y se vuelve a publicar en virtud de un acuerdo especial para compartir contenido a través del Servicio de noticias de traducción al español de NJ News Commons.

Content must published as-is

No editing of the content/copy is allowed. 

Content must include the full tagline

Each story includes a tagline at the end that must be published in full, including the hyperlink to the originating news organization’s website. 

Any questions?

Send an email to [email protected].