12.19.2011 | Global event, global marketing

The World Cup in South Africa is a year and half behind us, but among the hubbub and hullaballoo, one thing stood out from the rest: the event's anthem.

In this season of togetherness, no other song stands out as a more perfect example of our new global economy and how interconnected we are. In the melody, no doubt the feeling everyone shared as they were cheering for their teams was the same. But in the words, there are delightful differences—the translation process provides a window into each artist's culture, given their take on the original theme.

Some background: Somali-born Canadian artist K'naan originally wrote "Waving Flag" about his rough upbringing on the streets of Somalia, and the theme had been appropriated for the World Cup, adding the words "now wave your flag" to invite the listener into the celebration (the original song said "and then it goes back"). But to invite the world into the celebration, it needed to be translated into more languages.

Other languages use more syllables to communicate the same idea. So how did they get it across?

Original English (K'naan - Somalian-Canadian):

When I get older, I will be stronger, they'll call me freedom just like a waving flag/Now wave your flag

David Bisbal (Spanish):

Seremos grandes, seremos fuertes, sonos un pueblo, bandera de liberdad/Que viene y que va

Let's be big, let's be strong; we are one people, a banner of freedom that waves back and forth/back and forth

Féfé (Nigerian-French):

On est des soldats, sans armes au combat, ce soir la mission, c'est de chanter dans l'estade/chanter dans l'estade

We are soldiers, without arms in combat; tonight this is the mission: to sing in the stadium/sing in the stadium

Nancy Arjam (Egyptian Arabic):

Ta'rafla almak, hetla'eii helmak, oum meddi edak, sheg'aa ba'alamak da/ba'alamak da

I will teach you that you will reach your dreams, now give me your hand and let's cheer with this flag/with this flag …

The part after the slash is what gets repeated in the song for emphasis, so it's interesting to think how awkward some of those lyrics would be in English if we chose to sing them. But whatever these versions lack in the chorus, they make up for in the verses (which I might go into in a future post—for now, the Spanish chorus is most representative of that approach).

Even more revealing are the videos, which in the Spanish and Arabic versions show Coca-Cola's involvement in the sponsorship of the event—and melody. Coke's jingle makes an appearance as a soaring vocal anthem between verses. The product placement is most in-your-face in the Arabic version, which shows Nancy Arjam relaxing at the end to partake in the sponsor's beverage.

Contrast that, then, with the French version, where, unlike the English "Coca-Cola Celebration Mix," the anthem has been altered to avoid matching Coke's jingle, and the beverage is nowhere to be found among the scenes.

Which made me wonder: what would sporting events be like without product placements or ads? Would they be as exciting? Should they be?

11.14.2011 | Social reading and free will

I love the new social reading feature I'm seeing on Facebook. I get to see what my friends are reading; my friends get to see what I'm reading, and there's no effort required to go through the sharing process. More information = better. What could be better?

Well, here's the problem with social reading as I see it: you're giving up free will. Which isn't necessarily a problem in itself, so much as the fact that you don't get to see an article's contents before clicking on the headline, which generates an automatic share. Your friends see that you've "read" the article whether or not it ended up living up to your expectations. Things spread quickly enough on the Internet that a bunch of your friends could end up "reading" it too, and the chain continues.

So the temptation for journalists, as if it weren't strong enough already, is to write a sensational headline and then back it up poorly with incomplete or contradictory facts.

Take this article for instance: I decided "free will" was the best way to describe what it was about. But it's an exaggeration—of course you can go back and delete an article you've shared. You're not really giving up free will; it just takes a bit of extra effort to exercise it.

But it's not too much of an exaggeration either. So much of Internet use is predicated on what's easier, that an opt-out process for sharing might as well be equated with the use of force. But not really. You get the idea.

It's a challenge for publications to bring in new revenue these days, and if social reading generates more traffic, that has to be a good thing. But I hope journalists don't lose sight of the fact either that their first obligation is to report the facts truthfully and accurately.

7.23.2011 | Back in the saddle

After nearly two years of silence, I've moved my blog and I'm ready to reboot. Because Google changed the technology they use to put content on remote servers (like mine), I had to change how the blog appears on my site. The process was relatively simple, but I had to take some time out from real life to figure out how the technical details worked in the background. Now that I have that time, I'm hoping to use it to make a better blog. Who knows, maybe WordPress is in my future? Okay, one step at a time.

More to come. Or not. We'll see.

At least I'm able to publish now.

10.10.2009 | A Nobel gesture

The last time a sitting president won a Nobel prize was 90 years ago. Woodrow Wilson won in 1919 at a time when America was rising on the world stage to end a bitter global conflict. His Fourteen Points, especially "peace without victory," set forth the principles that would allow America to carry out the Marshall Plan post-WWII, in sharp contrast to the steep reparations that were levied on Germany for World War I.

Now in 2009, as another president who rocketed to prominence on the world stage seeks to bring the world together after a divisive period, the principal question being debated in the media is what President Obama did to deserve the prize—as if he needed to have fielded an army in Europe or negotiated a groundbreaking treaty to deserve the award. The committee's critics charge that the prize is politically motivated, a cheap shot at the outgoing president, with the nomination having been completed only two weeks after the president was elected.

Tommy De Seno of Fox News put it thusly: How to Win the Nobel Peace Prize In 12 Days. (Mercifully, an editor's note at the beginning explains that the selection process takes a year.) Seen on an Internet forum, one commentator noted, “All you really have to do to qualify as a world-renowned humanitarian is to replace George Bush in office.”

Surprise and sarcasm over, it's time to figure out why the Nobel committee would have made the decision it did. I'm going to operate on the assumption that—understanding that it might face charges of politicization—the committee nevertheless believed that its selection would fulfill its founder's mission of promoting peace. Alfred Nobel, inventor of trinitrotoluene (TNT, or dynamite)—a mild explosive by today's standards—created the foundation that awards the prizes that bear his name as a matter of regret for having brought such a weapon of war to the world. Robert Oppenheimer, inventor of the nuclear weapon, died with similar regrets.

So the key fact that's been missing from the discussion over Obama's meriting the prize, the one that has been sorely overlooked, the one that makes the award completely consistent with the committee's founding principles and aims, is Obama's tireless work toward nuclear disarmament. Not only did he dismantle the Bush-era missile defense system that restarted a nuclear arms race between the U.S. and Russia and partially led to a war in Georgia last summer, but as Senator he worked to pass nonproliferation legislation. Beyond nonproliferation, Obama's explicitly stated goal of zero nuclear arms (nuclear disarmament) creates a bold new framework for agreement as U.S. and Russia enter negotiations on the START I missile reduction treaty that is shortly coming up for renewal. (Obama's predecessor, by contrast, withdrew from the START II treaty agreed in 1997 that explicitly banned missile defense systems.)

So we come to the supposed "cheap shot"—which I would argue, far from cheap, is both a politically and historically important message key to the promotion of peace in the 21st century. Perhaps because of the politically charged nature of the debate, this historical perspective has been most sorely missing from the media coverage of Obama's win.

The doctrine of unilateral preemption espoused by Obama's predecessor represented the most significant threat to international stability since World War II. By taking the bold political stand that the committee has done, it has fulfilled its mission to promote world peace by ensuring that policy does not stand without repudiation. Without that repudiation, it would have stood as valid precedent, a green light with strong temptation for future presidents to repeat.

While it's too early in Obama's term to know what he will or won't accomplish, and we can't know if a peace prize will be enough to stop future presidents with an itchy trigger finger, we can know what the award was trying to do. In response to a policy of pre-emptive war, we have an act of pre-emptive peace—an attempt to help Obama politically in the moment to restore diplomacy as a primary means of resolving international disagreement, and a message to future presidents that this is the right way to go about things.

As ridiculous as it might have been to award Obama with a peace prize less than a year into office, the only thing more ridiculous would be to repeat the eight years of foreign policy that preceded him. And that's a prize-worthy statement.