The Chinese are by far the best in the world at being numerous. The country has a near-infinite workforce which will naturally drive the economy for years to come. Also, Yao Ming can get voted an All Star starter every year by legions of Chinese fans, whether he's deserving or not. Yi Jianlian is likely not far behind. Such are the perks of being numerous. No surprises though, right?

How about this then? What if I told you China has one of the world's best and most efficient language translation networks that this world has ever seen. And the secret to it's success lies in numbers.

There's a massive demand for foreign media and entertainment here in China. And in order to satisfy that demand, first it needs to be translated. What's happening in a nutshell, is that Chinese fans are doing all the work. And they're using their vast numbers to their advantage. They'll split the text up into many small pieces, distribute them via the internet, translate individually, and then reassemble.

Any professional translating company would he hard pressed to keep pace.



Author J.K. Rowling learned all about that earlier this past year, when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows underwent translation within weeks of it's release. Oddly enough, the big loser in that situation was the state-run People's Literature Publishing House that was tasked with the book's translation for official public consumption.

Well, today I had the unlikely pleasure of actually meeting one of the translators working on a similar team project. For convenience sake, we'll call her Fanny. She has been plugging away at a Chinese language version of a Nintendo DS game, and was good enough to answer a few questions about how translation projects such as this one typically go down.

A Volunteer Work Force
If anyone in the west is picturing a cheap work force slaving in some sort of translation sweatshop sans bathroom breaks, you're gonna be sadly mistaken. Fanny has indeed been slaving on the translation for this Nintendo game for the past year, with over 100 others like her. However, they all do it out of a passion for the game itself. While some of the webmasters will receive some cash from advertising, no monetary profit comes from the translation work for those who toil to convert the text for games into Chinese.

Amazingly these translating networks are, for the most part, volunteer work forces comprised of thousands of individual end users.

For those of us here in China, we've become accustomed to seeing Chinese subtitles on DVDs here. Well typically the newer the DVD, the worse the translations are. But as time goes on, many online translating communities kick in and start doing their thing. Fanny has worked in a translation group for a TV drama before, and told me that this group was structured into three smaller subgroups:

1. Video Supply Group: Responsible for the nasty work, recording the show in the country of origin. Typically America, Japan, or Korea; drama's from those countries are very popular in China.


2. Translation and Polishing Group - Text is divided among the translators for a rough translation. Their first draft is then passed on to a group of "polishers" who are usually higher level translators, generally having better listening skills.


3. Input and Art Design Group - These guys put the text into the video file, ensuring that the arrangement and presentation of the subtitles look good.

Fanny says working in gaming translation is far easier than dealing with movies or television, since they already have a text file to work with. In her case it's about 5.5 megabytes of text, which is pretty hefty for a text file. But for Western movies and TV, there is no English text file initially and they must work under huge pressure to get a working Chinese subtitles finished.

Fanny says video files can be downloaded for free using bit torrent technology, but the hosting website will insert ads into the video files to earn money. So for example, when an episode of Prison Break comes out, you can bet that other websites and translation groups are all competing to finish the project first. Whoever can get a good Mandarin translation out there first, will certainly see the benefits of huge ad exposure. Invariably, the videos end up on China's video-sharing Web sites, giving them another platform (besides BT) from which they can leapfrog to their awaiting public. Now, whether the users of a certain Web group sees the benefits of the ad revenue, I can't speculate. It would certainly make perfect sense if they did.

I have to say that it's hard not to fall in love with the idea of a handful of Chinese youths implementing innovative methods to spread Western media and culture, motivated by their thirst for an alternative to censored and boring state-controlled media. Those in the American Government who cry intellectual property foul should consider the benefits of such cultural export to China.

The underlying message is that young China loves America. And they're hungry for more.

That's very reassuring given the current political climate, wouldn't you agree?

 

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