Stumbling Upon Myself...

It's always interesting to see and hear what others have to say about your work. One of the most important things for a blogger in fact is the appreciation/critique fellow-bloggers or internet users give to her work. It doesn't make a difference whether it is a word of compliment or a word of concern, the fact that your name or your blog has been referred to on someone else's blog or website shows that you are relevant enough to someone.

I was super excited to google my name recently and find several sites using my work. It's exciting - you will discover a lot more about yourself too if you just google out your name! What's more exciting in the e-world is that there are no boundaries here. My work has been translated into Spanish, French and German and I found it all on google!

French:

During Ramadan 2006, which was my first Ramadan after returning from college, I wrote an article called "Ramadan from California to Karachi" which was published in Dawn. Later the article was also published in Ohmynews and Chowk. On a site called anthropologi info the writer has talked about Ramadan in France and then connected it with how and what Ramadan is around the world. I was so encouraged to see how the writer has broken up parts of my article and copied them as reference material in the original article, giving my name and the link to my article.

Spanish:

An academic journal has taken my article on "Role of Media" and copied it there for its readers giving me my copyright credit which is why I am A-okay with it. The article was the first article I ever wrote as a citizen journalist/blogger. I published it in Ohmynews and the article remained on its homepage for over 2 months. It was widely appreciated and later I received an email from Computer Amateurist of Columbia University asking for my permission to publish this article in their journal.

Another Spanish site called hoy.com has an article by an author called Carlos Jijon who has taken quotes from my article and added his thoughts and opinions to it. This one is probably the most encouraging for me because the author has not simply copied it but actually broken it into pieces and built his article around it.

What's also interesting to me is that the articles that have been translated into Spanish use my article written on "The Role of Media." If I were to force myself to think why this particular article, it makes me wonder that the role of media, its manipulation at the hands of the social and political elite must be an important issue of concern for the Spanish speaking public around the world.

German:

My article on Dr. Afia Siddiqui has been translated into German on this website called Reader's Edition. The article was originally titled "Who is Afia Siddiqui" and has been translated word by word into this site and was first published on Ohmynews.

I used one of the free translation sites online to see what had been written. Alternatively google has an option next to every non-English link that says "Translate this page" and if u click it u see the foreign link in English. It usually works but for this German site it just wouldn't which is why I had to resort to using Yahoo Babelfish - a popular free translator site.

The cool thing is - I got a 4.8 out of 5 rating on the article too!

Blogging is changing, or some might argue, has already changed the face of the world. It is the bond between bloggers from around the world, the ability of blogging to break boundaries and surpass languages that is going to bring the world even closer. Diversity is not just celebrated here, but in fact taken for granted in the blogging world - a united tomorrow is not far away!