Foreign Broadcast Information Service of the United States (FBIS)

Highlighting a recent e-resource of use to readers interested in the Commonwealth and beyond.

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service of the United States (FBIS) has gathered and translated information from worldwide sources. The original mission of FBIS was to monitor, record, transcribe and trans-late intercepted radio broadcasts from foreign governments, official news services, and clandestine broad-casts from occupied territories. These translations, or transcriptions in the case of English language mate-rials, make up the Daily Reports


Translated into English from more than 50 languages - from Amharic to Urdu - these comprehensive media reports from around the globe include news, interviews, speeches, editorial commentary and other ma-terials. FBIS provides verbatim translations, abstracts or summaries of original broadcasts or written texts.
 
The FBIS database has been created from fiche using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to digitize the content. Each page is produced in a manner that provides the highest quality possible image from the fiche. This includes deskewing and cropping every page image. When the computer cannot recognize or misinterprets some of the letter shapes on the page this can result in searches providing false reports.


FBIS Daily Reports, 1974-1996 is comprised of EIGHT separate regional Daily Reports whose mnemonic abbreviations and coverage include the Middle East and [North] Africa (MEA), 1974-1987; Near East and South Asia (NES), 1987-1996; South Asia (SAS), 1980-1987; Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), 1974-1980 and (AFR), 1987-1996; China (CHI), 1974-1996; Asia and the Pacific (APA), 1974-1987; East Asia (EAS), 1987-1996; Latin America (LAT and LAM), 1974-1996; Eastern Europe (EEU), 1974-1996; Soviet Union/Central Eurasia (SOV), 1974-1996; Western Europe (WEU), 1974-1996. The FBIS Daily Reports included in this collection were published from April 1974 through September 1996.