Were I not a Russian speaker, I would not have been considered for my last job as CNN’s Moscow field producer. But that was for a post in a traditional broadcast media company. Things have changed rapidly since then. In my role at Storyful, despite my lack of Arabic, Spanish, German, and other languages, I regularly curate foreign language YouTube videos and tweets, and validate their authenticity for our clients. This is possible because I am able to communicate in 57 languages, though I only speak two.
Today’s online translation tools make it possible for anyone with an Internet connection to read texts in foreign languages and translate entire web pages. The addition and proliferation of social media has made our world even smaller by allowing us to correspond with one another on a personal level across barriers previously penetrable only with the aid of interpreters. For journalists like me, the convergence of these technologies means that we can travel from story to story without stepping away from the computer, intervi