When Danwei started in 2003, there were very few places online to find translations from the Chinese media. There now seem to be hundreds of bloggers, Net-heads and other obsessives translating all kinds of material and making it available online for free.
In the last month, two open source, free online translation websites have started, and both projects are well worth following:
This is a wiki style website with numerous contributors (including Danwei writers). Contributors ‘claim’ articles for translation and then post the finished work on the wiki and on their own websites, though there are tentative steps toward more extensive collaboration and aggregation. Most of the contributors are native English speakers; the translated material covers a huge range of subjects. You can find the contributors’ own blogs and websites by clicking on their names.
Most of the contributors appear to be native Chinese speakers with an interest in the Internet and technology. It’s only been running for a few days, but there are already several interesting translations available.
Four other other excellent China media resources that you may already be aware of:
A project of the Journalism & Media Studies Centre at The University of Hong Kong, this website publishes translations from the Chinese media and original reporting and research.
Interlocals.net describes itself a “a website for the non-english speaking world to communicate with each other on their social, cultural, and political issues through the collective efforts of a group of media activists, in translating local news and debates into an international context”. So far, Most of the site’s content is related to Greater China. It features translations as well as original writing.
A global blog aggregator and translator with a very strong China section.
A one-man translation machine whose prolific output and massive range of sources leave most bloggers feeling inadequate.