Chinese stories

I was waiting to post until I could find a Chinese translation of Obama’s March 18th speech. So far I only found a partial translation on the Chinesehorizon forum. Who’s going to step up and do a full version?? Even though it is supposed to be the best speech since JFK, in China the topic of American race relations seems so remote, so I can understand why it wouldn’t make a big splash here. In some ways I feel China is even more diverse than the US. Even though the Han people are the vast majority, there are so many languages, dialects, and customs that every day people can encounter someone who is different from them. However, the latest developments in Tibet have a little of the taste of US race relations I think. I put a link to the Chinese translation along with the Chinese version of Randy Pausch’s last lecture on a speeches page.

I was happy to see NewsinChinese back up–I sure wish I had this kind of resource when I was first learning Chinese. They even have a few goodies like passages from Honglou Meng and Lu Xun. I have tried installing the Adsotrans plugin on this site, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe I have to fiddle with it some more. Here’s a big thanks to David and the Chinesepod folks for this great resource.

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Call me biased for putting up a link to a 老乡, but being from Kalamazoo, MI, I was pleased to find the blog Myth of Arrival by Grand Rapids poet Zachary Chartkoff.  He translates poetry into and out of many languages, including Chinese. His translations of Chinese poetry mostly focus on women writers–Qiu Jin and others. I admire his courage for not being afraid to work in languages that he is not strongest in. To do this he gets help from other users of poetry websites and forums from around the world.

My wife didn’t want me to go through with my plan for my second post on websites dedicated to translating western TV shows into Chinese. (I like how Chinese people group Europe and America into one big group 欧美剧 and don’t really make any distinctions between the two. The typical American view is that Europe is something totally different, and anything non-American or European falls within one blurry spectrum of other foreign things.) But then she put the links up on my wiki, and even if I deleted them they would still be in the wiki history. Once something is saved to a wiki, is it ever possible to completely get rid of all traces of it?

So, to compromise, I won’t link to them or mention their names in this post, but they’re pretty easy to find. She didn’t want me to post them, because if word gets out, the television stations will put pressure on the government to crack down on them. The sites are basically forums that provide links to the means to download the shows, summaries of the shows and every episode, and an online community for the translators and subtitlers of the shows (all done for free of course). They usually provide rewards for spotting errors in the translations, so if a member sees a mistranslation at 4:30, he can post the error on the forum in exchange for bonus points or an increased reputation.

I feel that it would not be in the networks best interest to try to crack down on these sites. After all, there are tons of western TV shows available on the Chinese video sharing sites, as those sites don’t have to deal with the copyright problems that Youtube does. Furthermore, these sites are developing huge fan bases for these American shows that would otherwise never be seen by ordinary Chinese people. Why not work with these sites and try to provide some sort of streaming video or other form of distribution of the shows on a pay-per-view basis? (Using pre-paid cards I suppose.) The networks must be able to find some way to benefit off these dedicated fans. After all, if the sites get shut down, the viewers will switch to whatever else is available, like Korean dramas or China’s dark horse, CCTV9. （OK, just kidding about that last one.)

In case you’re wondering, here’s the Wiki

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Well, I’ve put a wiki up on my website (here). (I guess it’s called 维基 in Chinese?) The purpose of the wiki is to provide a home for links to online English-Chinese/Chinese-English translations. I got tired of going to google everytime I wanted to find one, so I figured I might as well make my own list. I am thinking of doing something like highlighting two (one C-E, one E-C) translations or websites each month.

So, to start off, here is a blog that accepts translations of English language media from volunteer contributors. For example, here is a translation of a Simon Elegant post from the Time blog (Time blog link bloated with blogspam) translated by ”Vindicated.”

And here (links to 4.6MB PDF file) is an amazing translation of all of Li Qingzhao’s ci poetry by Wang Jiaosheng.

I have no idea what will come of the wiki; I figure one of many things might happen with it, the worst being that it will be taken over by spammers who will bring it down, and the best being that it will somehow survive and grow. To be safe I turned off the email capabilities for now, but I will trust in the wikipedia maxim that there are more good intentioned people than bad. So go in there, check it out, and mess it all up!

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