No, the English edition of EL PAÍS has not called PP President 'Paul Married'

One consequence of the coronavirus crisis has been an increase in the number of hoaxes and misinformation, from dubious advice on how to fight the virus to the seemingly endless stream of audio files allegedly recorded by healthcare professionals.

MORE INFORMATION

• Read the English version of this article

This Wednesday, it was up to the English edition of EL PAÍS to be the victim of one of these hoaxes, when someone shared an image - not even a screenshot, but a photo from a monitor - of what many took for granted that it was ours. cover page.

Those who took a moment to look closely at the image realized that it was clearly the main cover of the EL PAÍS website, run by an automatic translator. And the truth is that the text was not bad at all. But of course, Google Translate had taken the last name of the president of the Popular Party, Pablo Casado, and had translated it literally as "Married," which was actually very funny.

pic.twitter.com/AjLZbeyHfs

This tweet was retweeted more than 1,300 times and got 4,400 'likes'.

But what was not so funny was the speed with which users of social networks like Twitter believed that it was a real image of the main page of EL PAÍS English Edition. It began to run like wildfire on networks and also on WhatsApp, accompanied by a wide range of critical comments with EL PAÍS for using the Google translator and causing this supposed error. And all this, despite the fact that a simple glance at our real cover would have revealed that the image shared in networks was not authentic.

Even Hermann Tertsch, MEP for the far-right Spanish party Vox, shared the image with his nearly 208,000 Twitter followers, although he later rectified it. The Madrid deputy Almudena Negro, from the PP, also shared it. She also later tweeted EL PAÍS's clarification. (By the way, both Tertsch and Negro are journalists.)

El País says that the image that circulates with a translation of an English headline of Casado as “Married” is not an original publication of El País, so we must deduce that it is a forgery, a bad faith montage to discredit this newspaper. So I proceed to withdraw it. https://t.co/i0XPqLWiu7

The Country in English is as serious as in Spanish. pic.twitter.com/3WZHZdkDLq

The heroes of the social network team from EL PAÍS began to send messages to those who shared the photo to warn them that it was not our page. Some, to be fair, rectified, but most did not erase their original messages - without a doubt, when a tweet starts to pick up speed it is difficult to correct it.

But perhaps the most surprising thing in this whole story was when a Spanish news website chose to write an entire article mocking our supposed error and lack of journalistic rigor, including tweets written in response to the image. Perhaps someone who deserves criticism for their journalistic practices is a medium that publishes such an article without making the slightest effort to verify the authenticity of the image. As a former colleague of mine said, " never let the facts get in the way of a good story ."

The networks are broken with El País for using 'Google Translator' with Pablo 'Married' Casadohttps: //t.co/2V0NzSZEdu

This is how EL PAÍS English Edition works

During the coronavirus crisis, EL PAÍS English Edition has had more traffic than ever, because English-speaking readers in Spain and abroad are looking for updated and reliable information on the situation in this country, especially related to the entire process. de-escalation of confinement.

More posts from this blog

• What is hidden in the photos of floods of people during the lack of control

• Manual of the extreme right to misinform

• Official sources sometimes lie: four cases that prove it

So this may be a good time to explain exactly what we do and how we do it. We never use translation programs like Google Translate. This is above all because very rarely do we make an exact copy in English of the original articles in Spanish.

We like to say that we create “versions” of the original articles, since much of our work consists of adding context and explanations for readers who do not have to know much about Spain. This often means cutting text from the original article, adding additional information to provide context, and rewriting the texts when necessary. The goal is to make sure that the reader understands what you are reading, and also why this information is relevant. Even a reader who has never set foot on Spanish soil should be able to read our articles without losing the thread.

Although this requires experience in translation, our work also has a lot of journalism, since we must select the most relevant topics for our readers, write texts that are easy to understand even for people without great knowledge about Spain, working against the clock and under pressure. And to this we must add the technical knowledge involved in managing a website and maintaining social media accounts.

Also, we almost always change the headlines. A headline that works well for a Spanish reader rarely works well for an English speaker. And although we use American English - EL PAÍS English Edition began life as a paper supplement to the International Herald Tribune , and before the coronavirus crisis we had more readers in the United States than in any other country - we leaned towards a more British style for the title , since it gives us more flexibility.

To conclude, in case anyone still has any doubts, who knows that we would never ever translate Pablo Casado as "Paul Married," nor Jaime Mayor Oreja as "Jamie Bigger Ear". As a reader told us this Wednesday during the storm on Twitter, if we did these things, we would have really serious problems talking about Kiko Matamoros ...

Follow us on Twitter and Flipboard