{"id":11501,"date":"2017-04-28T15:49:53","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T10:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dorjegurung.com\/blog\/?p=11501"},"modified":"2025-04-01T13:30:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T12:30:14","slug":"lost-in-transcription","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/lost-in-transcription\/","title":{"rendered":"Lost In Transcription"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On April 5, I gave a presentation as one of the number of speakers in this season’s series of what’s called Wisdom Wednesdays<\/a> organized by Next Generation Nepal (NGN). NGN works to reunite — with their parents or living relatives — children trafficked to orphanages, among other things. The presentation series aim to raise awareness about voluntourism in general and volunteering at orphanages in particular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A journalist and her photographer for the national daily The Himalayan Times<\/em> were also in the audience. Three days later, the paper published the following piece on page 9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Click on the image for the original.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sadly, but not surprisingly, the article got the CENTRAL MESSAGE of my presentation completely WRONG!<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I shared how as an international science teacher<\/a> — between graduating from college (in 1994) and returning to Nepal (in 2013) — I did NOT volunteer a SINGLE TIME in any of the countries I lived or traveled in (see image below), in spite of an interest in — and experience with — volunteering and social service as a student!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also shared one of my main reasons for NOT doing so (see image below). I explained how thinking or believing that I could make a difference in the lives of people in countries I wasn’t invested in long-term would be a little arrogant of me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(If you are interested, the blog post So You Want to Volunteer in Nepal?<\/a> has a video of the entire presentation!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also have some petty issues and questions surrounding the write-up, all of which could be materials for another blog post. But two questions that boggles my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Firstly, having gotten the idea (or decided?) that I had actually said that I had volunteered for 19 years — 19 YEARS! — what drove her to reproduce that — TWICE! — without questioning it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(She had my business card with my contact details — email address, office phone number, blog url etc. — AND my mobile phone number, something not in the card but which she had asked for and I provided!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondly, having decided that 19 years of volunteering is indeed within the realm of possibilities, what led her to write BOTH “[he] spent 19 years volunteering as an international science teacher” AND “[u]pon his return to Nepal, he volunteered as a teacher from 1994 to 2013”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Unless, she heard I volunteered twice — 19 years before 1994 and then another 19 years since — for a grand total of 38 years! Or, maybe she thought the two were one and the same…as difficult as it is to believe that!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, it’s entirely possible that the egregious factual error and the contradiction were an oversight on the part of rather the Editor, or the typesetter, and NOT the journalist!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you think?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How a journalist completely missed the central point of — AND misrepresented what I shared at — a presentation about volunteering that I made earlier this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":11512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Lost In Transcription #Nepal #NepalJournalism #NepaliMedia #Misrepresentation @thehimalayan","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[197],"tags":[446,629,451,448,449,362,447],"class_list":["post-11501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-presentations-and-speeches","tag-stoporphantrips","tag-in-the-media","tag-nepali-journalism","tag-paddy-foleys","tag-the-himalayan-times","tag-voluntourism","tag-wisdom-wednesdays"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/THT-story-of-a-volunteer-feat-image.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Jbro-2Zv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28255,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11501\/revisions\/28255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}