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26 March, 2005

"Click here More News"

The standard of "journalism" in the Khaleej Times really is beyond the fucking pale. The English used is so broken and bizarre that it is actually difficult to work out the meaning of many articles:

SHARJAH — The "Sharjah stalker" would face punishment after all, with the committee of specialists comprising psychiatric and forensic experts examining his state of mind giving the nod.

DUBAI — A traffic official has explained that every violation of the red signal need not land drivers in jail.

Is it so difficult to actually write in comprehensible English? Clearly (or rather unclearly) it is too hard for the band of quill-wielding cretins on the KT newsdesk. How can any columnist expect to be taken seriously - quite apart from the ludicrous content of most of his columns - when he writes like this:

THE case of a woman in death bed is raising so much heat and dust in America. There apparently is more to what essentially is an emotive issue, as money and politics have got mixed up with the plight of the 41-year-old Terry Schiavo.

The Khaleej Times is the worst insult to newspapers, to journalism, and to the English language in the history of the printing press.

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5 Comments:

Blogger portuguesa nova said...

I am a conference planner for an international charity organization which exists in 130 countries. Becasue of this, I read tons of English language newspapers (I'm always sent in articles featuring the conferences).

I must say, that, the worst I've seen so far are articles from the Philippines.

Do most people in the UAE speak English well?

26 March, 2005 17:29  
Blogger secretdubai said...

English is probably the main business language in the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar, at least equal in usage to Arabic (unless you are trying to target countries such as Saudi, where Arabic is much more of a necessity).

People here tend to have excellent understanding and spoken useage of English. The problem is that it is a second language for most people, so in terms of professional written use, there are a lot of problems.

26 March, 2005 19:26  
Blogger nomadica said...

I'd like to nominate some of Oman's media as well for their awful use of English, specifically the Times of Oman newspaper. Every week they publish a magazine called Thursday (inspired by GN's Friday but no where near as good)and the columns and articles in that mag are...well, hilarious. Without meaning to be, of course.

28 March, 2005 19:39  
Blogger Keef said...

Well according to some ad panels on lampposts on Jumeirah Beach Road, KT is the UAEs only 'English language newspaper'. Don't know why Gulf News and Gulf Today (and even possibly 7 Days) haven't had them jailed yet. But yes, KT is utter shite, and I really cannot stand the way they put about 20 snippets of stories on the front page and then continue them on page 8-9-10. Can't they figure out what's important? Clearly not.

30 March, 2005 00:05  
Blogger secretdubai said...

Aren't they glorious?

When you drive past the "KT is the only English newspaper!" you reach the qualifying ad: "providing FEARLESS coverage" - which is of course even more of a lie.

30 March, 2005 00:41  

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