Little Red Blog

Will the Middle Kingdom sinicise its latest barbarian invader?

by Rick Martin, China

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How to translate a Chinese RSS feed into really tedious English

Jun 21, 2007 18:27

There was a great post yesterday on Webware about how to translate an RSS feed into any language. What they suggest is to use Yahoo Pipes to run the RSS feed through Altavista's Babelfish translator, and then subscribe to the translated output.

If that concept gives you a Sino-headache, please see the funky diagram below.

I tried this little trick for a few Chinese sites, and while the results weren't sparkling (they never are when translating from Chinese to English) it might be enough for some people who really would like a window on what's happening on the Chinese intermesh. Certain feeds didn't quite work out when I subscribed through bloglines, but maybe the results would be different in another reader.

Here's a feed for Sina Technology that works quite well. Of course, don't set your expectations too high because the translated articles are far from Shakespeare:

The iPhone next week goes on the market may broadcast the YouTube video frequency

The Sina science and technology news Beijing standard time on June 21 the news, reported according to the overseas media that, the apple Wednesday indicated, the iPhone intelligence handset next week goes on the market after the American market, might broadcast under Gu Geqi the video frequency to share website YouTube the video frequency. The apple stated, for coordinates iPhone to issue, YouTube first batch will provide approximately 10,000 to be possible the video frequency which will broadcast on iPhone, and hopefully before this year autumn other video frequency.

Does anyone else think this looks like it was written by a drunken tech writer?

Now of course if you want Apple news, you may as well just read it in English to begin with. But for stuff that's going on in the tech world here behind the Great Firewall, you might be better off with an inside view. And this little workaround might be a good way to start.

Sina Technology RSS feed translated through babelfish and yahoo pipes

Source: Webware, via Lifehacker

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About Rick Martin

After years of honing his skills playing Shinobi on the rocky shores of Newfoundland, he moved on to become a freelance ninja. But due to a lull in the Canadian ninja market, Rick Martin teleported to Asia where he studied Chinese and the dark arts of China blogging. When he's not busy with all that stuff, he makes appearances at an international computer company where he does a little something called "work". He can also be found on Twitter and Facebook, or contact him via Email.