For any number of reasonable CV items you suddenly have a job with an overseas publication, published in another language, offices and staff in another country. You are now a foreign correspondent, stationed in the U.S. and writing about U.S. foreign policy. Oops: inside out?
Think of it: you are Kenya born and Kenya bred, raised and educated in both countries and you’re now in Washington D.C. to explain U.S. diplomacy to those back home. Fluent in both languages, educated in both countries, good academic connections in the U.S., but where to start in a new career move. It was, in effect, a brave new world for me as an American working for a French publication and my first thought was to find a journalist. Journalists are notoriously generous about all things but secret sources. I made lists: sources, e-mail addresses, phone calls to know what staffers I might contact, what media communications I had to read and clubs I could join. Happily, the OPC is here in New York but I had to push to find someone to recommend me. For starters, pleasant but serious pushiness and imagination are helpful, followed by effort and efficiency.
It is an advantage to come across as a foreigner in your home country. Again, I’m not but when I e-mail and say for whom I’m writing it stimulates a reaction, if only low level. Here in the U.S., we don’t face much danger as reporters unless one understands the mechanisms of who, what and how to know a fairly risky activity. What a journalist in this country should consider dangerous is overload: too much is available to us thanks to electronic media and other open sources. Problematic, and hard to sort. All that information should be checked and double checked before you report to your targeted readers who deserve the best and want to read prose they can understand.
Writing in a second language, and translating the words of others is tricky. Basic journalism courses teach technique, but we take for granted what we know so well: our use of language. For all practical purposes I’m bi-lingual, but journalism is another language and each country has its style and comfort level. In France, the literary comfort level is higher than in the U.S. since education is national and standards that focus on history, historic culture and appealing rhetoric must be met. For example, appropriate metaphors using past images are O.K. for journalists, even pop artists and music and current Parisian vernacular. (Paris energy is internalized nationally overnight.)
Mistakes I made were to miss these cues and forget, or just not remember, my readers. With a little success, I grew obnoxious, insisting they send me their edited texts as I suffered over some editing or additions I disliked intensely. In each case, the fault was mine. My favorite: in a Kissinger interview my lead referred to him at least three times as “Cher Henri” to which I objected with exclamation points, serial question marks and editorial outs. Their reference: a 20-year-old best seller with that title written by a French journalist as an open letter to Kissinger. “Cher Henri” had been absorbed into French culture, distasteful as I found it. Humility replaced arrogance and I try harder now.
There is no more derisory way to lead into a critical piece on the U.S. Congress than to remind readers of the silliness of the U.S. House unanimous vote for “freedom fries” on its menu after France’s refusal to vote for Bush’s war in Iraq.