A screenshot of the Special Coverage archive page in English, featuring links to all the available Special Coverage categories where collections of stories are grouped together.

Special Coverage refers to a collection of stories about the same topic. The stories are grouped together using a Special Coverage category, which has images, introductory text and other elements associated with it. A Special Coverage category is listed alongside all others on the Special Coverage archive page. Depending on editorial priorities, a particular Special Coverage category might also be promoted on the homepage of a Global Voices site for a time.

Like stories, Special Coverage is originally produced by the Newsroom. Once it is published, Lingua communities are free to translate it into their languages.

Understanding Special Coverage categories

When you create or translate a Global Voices story, you start with a WordPress post. When you create or translate a page on a Global Voices site, you start with a WordPress page. But Special Coverage is neither a WordPress post nor a WordPress page – it is actually a category, a “Special Category.”

Special Coverage categories are found under “Posts” in WordPress.

The edit screen of a WordPress category is not as sophisticated as the ones for a post or a page. A WordPress category also can’t be “fetched” like a post or a page for translation. For these reasons, we’ve created the following workflow to translate “Special Categories” that attempts to address these challenges.

(The system described below is under development and as such, it may change in the future. If and when this happens, this guide will be updated accordingly.)

Translating Special Coverage categories

When you see Special Coverage that you want to translate or when the Newsroom puts out a call for language communities to translate a new Special Coverage, follow these steps to translate it. If you need help at any point, reach out to the Lingua Director or the Tech Lead.

Translate at least three stories that belong to the Special Coverage category

Special Coverage refers to a collection of stories about the same topic. All of the stories in the collection will carry the same Special Coverage category. That Special Coverage category is automatically created on a language site when a story which carries it is fetched for translation for the first time.

A notice appears on the top of the edit screen when you fetch a story for translation which carries a Special Category that has never been fetched before on your language site.

This is why the first step to translating Special Coverage is to translate and publish at least three stories that belong to the Special Coverage category. This ensures that:

1. The Special Coverage has stories to feature – after all, a story collection that is empty of stories isn’t very useful for readers.
2. The Special Coverage category which organizes the collection has been created on a language site – without it, it’s not possible to properly translate the Special Coverage.

You can find the stories to translate by going to the original-language version of the Special Coverage category and picking one that interests you. These stories should be fetched, translated and published as normal. See the Beginner’s Guide to Translating Global Voices Stories for more.

Some of the stories that belong to the Special Coverage category on International Mother Language Day 2025.

“Fetch” and translate the Special Coverage category’s working draft

Once at least three stories from a Special Coverage category have been translated, you can move onto translating the contents of the Special Coverage category’s page.

When the Newsroom produces Special Coverage, they create a WordPress post which remains in draft that contains the title, image, body text, tagline and excerpt of the special page where the collection of stories is featured. This working draft is labeled in the title as TERM POST DRAFT and it will never be published.

The Preview links to these working drafts can be fetched for translation on a language site in the same way as any other story. (See the Beginner’s Guide to Translating Global Voices Stories for more.) These Preview links are compiled in a spreadsheet called “GV Special Coverage Terms Database.” To translate one:

1. Open the spreadsheet and locate the Preview URL of the Special Coverage that you would like to translate. Copy the URL.
2. While logged into your language site, navigate to the Dashboard and click Add a New Post.
3. Paste the Preview URL of the Special Coverage in the Source Post URL field of the GV Lingua Translation box.
4. Click Fetch Post Data. This will bring all of the content from the original post into your new post automatically.
5. Translate the title, tagline, excerpt and the section of the body text labeled “Taxonomy Archive Header.” Make sure to save your work.
6. DO NOT PUBLISH. This post will never be published.

Populate the Special Coverage category’s fields with translated text

Now that all of the contents related to the Special Coverage category have been translated in the post, you can input them into the corresponding fields in the Special Coverage category’s edit screen.

1. While logged into your language site, navigate to the Dashboard. In the black sidebar, hover over Posts and click the option Special Categories.
2. Amongst the listed categories, locate the category you want. Hover over its name and click Edit.
3. Copy the contents that you have translated in the Special Coverage category’s working draft post and paste them into the corresponding fields in the Special Coverage category’s edit screen. See the chart below.
4. Once finished, make sure to click Save.
5. The translated Special Coverage category page will now be available on the site. You can visit it by clicking View Category in the black WordPress bar at the top of the category edit screen, or by visiting one of the stories that are part of the Special Coverage, locating the category’s link at the bottom of the story’s text and clicking on it.

A side-by-side comparison of the “TERM DRAFT POST” and the Special Coverage category edit screen.

Feature the category on the Special Coverage archive page

The Special Coverage archive page lists all Special Coverage categories. On the Global Voices site in English, it can be found at globalvoices.org/specialcoverage/, and many translated archive pages are tied to it. We need to add our newly translated Special Coverage category to this archive page.

1. Navigate to the Special Coverage archive page in your language. (If it doesn’t exist, then create it first. Because there are often big discrepancies between the original English-language version and other language versions, it can make sense to start from scratch. Add a new page, “fetch” the English-language version, translate the title but erase all the body contents. Then proceed with step 2.)
2. Open the archive page’s edit screen by clicking the Edit option in the black WordPress banner while logged in.
3. Return to the TERM POST DRAFT. (If you’ve saved the URL to the post’s edit screen in the Term Notes” field, as explained above, this should be easy.) Locate the shortcode in the section of the body text labeled “Shortcode for Widget in Featured Posts Sidebar.” It should look something like this: [gv_term_promo term="international-mother-language-day-2025" taxonomy="gv_special"]
4. Copy the shortcode and paste it at the top of the listing of Special Coverage categories on the Special Coverage archive page.
5. Click to Save the update that you have made to the page. The Special Coverage category will now show on the archive page like this:

When you insert the Special Coverage category shortcode into a page, it is shown visually like this.

Important: If you see the following shortcode in the edit screen of the page, leave it alone: [gvpages parent='self' orderby='modified']. This is a code from our old Special Coverage system, and while we no longer use this, we preserve it because it’s an important historical record.

Add new translated stories to the category

Going forward, whenever you fetch a story for translation that carries the Special Coverage category you have translated, it will be automatically added to the Special Coverage. So you don’t need to do anything special!

If you notice that the original-language version of the Special Coverage has stories that you have already translated, but those translated stories don’t show up in your translated Special Coverage, don’t worry: It’s probably because you translated the stories before the Special Coverage category was created. Simply open up the edit screen for the translated story, add the Special Coverage category in the Categories box, and click Save.

Summary of the process

To briefly summarize the process:

1. Translate and publish at least three stories that belong to the Special Coverage category.
2. In a new post, “fetch” the Special Coverage category’s “TERM POST DRAFT” using the Preview link found in the “GV Special Coverage Terms Database.”
3. In this draft, translate the title, image caption, body text, tagline and excerpt. Make sure you save your work, but DO NOT PUBLISH. This post will never be published.
4. In WordPress, go to Post –> Special Categories and find the category in question. Click Edit. Copy and paste all of the translated elements from the working draft into the category’s fields, then Save.
5. Using the [gv_term_promo] shortcode from the top of the “TERM POST DRAFT,” add the new Special Coverage collection to the archive page that compiles all Special Coverage.

Promoting Special Coverage on the homepage

We can promote Special Coverage on the homepage of a language site by using the same shortcode that we incorporated on the Special Coverage archive page and inputting it into a Widget in the Appearance section of WordPress. Reach out to the Lingua Director or the Tech Lead for help if you need it.

Promoting Special Coverage categories on the home page.

Full technical explanation of the Special Coverage category system

For all of the details, big and small, about this Special Category system, which remains under development, please consult the Temporary Special Category Guide.