Intercultural Communication and Translation News

    Posted by admin on March 17th, 2009

The following is an extract from Waxy.org – the sandbox of Andy Baio, an independent journalist and programmer living in Portland, Oregon.

While researching Oscar screeners last month, I stumbled on a remarkable example of online collaboration in China that’s completely undiscovered here. In short, a group of dedicated fans of The Economist newsmagazine are translating each weekly issue cover-to-cover, splitting up the work among a team of volunteers, and redistributing the finished translations as complete PDFs for a Chinese audience.

It reminds me of the scanlation movement, in which groups of fans scan, translate, and redistribute manga into another language. But I’ve never seen it applied to a newspaper or magazine, especially one as high-minded as The Economist.

It’s an impressive example of online collaboration with simple tools, a completely non-commercial effort by volunteers interested in spreading knowledge while improving their English skills. In the process, they’re taking a political risk in translating controversial articles about their homeland behind the Great Firewall.

I can’t read Chinese, but with the help of Google’s translation tools and several Chinese-speaking friends, I think I’ve pieced it together. (If anyone out there knows more, please email or IM me and I’ll add it in.)

Read more > Economist in Chinese

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