Introducing My New Project To Translate Wonderful Posts Into Chinese - Let's Increase The Chinese User Base On Steemit!

in cn •  8 years ago 

Hello Friends! I'm starting a new project to increase the Chinese user base on Steemit. I believe in the future of Steemit, and I want to diversify that future and diversify the platform. I believe that Steemit has the potential to become very popular in China, however there are very few Chinese posts currently published. I am half Chinese and want to share Steemit with my friends and family in China, but a huge language barrier still exists. Here's my project:

I am going to translate posts that I have found interesting into Mandarin Chinese. I will obtain permission from the original authors and of course cite them and their original post. I plan on posting once per day to once every other day. I plan on translating the posts and having my mother proofread the translation (she is a native born Chinese speaker with an American Literature masters degree). If time is crunched I may outsource translation, but I will always proofread everything. The idea is to translate interesting posts in order to provide Chinese readers with an increase of great content to read. Here is the first post, originally written by @jholdsworthy. The original post is titled "I used to hate China, but now I love it. And why they'll be a HUGE part of the Steemit revolution." and can be found here:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@jholdsworthy/2lw4hu-i-used-to-hate-china-but-now-i-love-it-and-why-they-ll-be-a-huge-part-of-the-steemit-revolution


我以前讨厌中国,但现在我爱它,他们是STEEMIT革命中重要的一部分。

I used to hate China, but now I love it. And why they'll be a HUGE part of the Steemit revolution.

我在13岁的时候来的澳大利亚,那时我还没念完小学,在澳大利亚我的父母强迫我参加汉语学习课程。我当时不知道为什么,我想我在汉语口语已经很好了,为什么还要变得更好呢?

I came to Australia at age 13. I haven't even completed primary school at that time, and my parents forced me to attend Chinese classes in Australia. I simply didn't get the point. I thought, I was already good enough in speaking Chinese. Why do I need to become better at it still?

现在回过头看,他们当时真的是太正确了。他们可能预料到中国将成为世界上最大的消费者和投资者。他们是正确的,因为我感觉我汉语的口语水平随着时间流逝会日益恶化,而且会变得更糟如果我不参加这些重要的汉语课程。

Now looking back, they were dead right. They probably foresaw that the Chinese will be the world's largest consumers, and investors. And they were right because I felt my Chinese speaking skills deteriorate over time, and it would have worsened even faster if I didn't attend these important Chinese lessons.

我现在比大多数说英语的人有优势,尽管我是个地道的说英语的人,但我也能熟练的说汉语。

I now have a lingual advantage over most English speakers. Albeit being a native English speaker, I am also a fluent Chinese speaker.


是什么让中国人如此重要和特别?

So what is it that makes the Chinese so important, and so special?

答案是如此简单。他们在生活中经历了许多我们无法想象的许多东西, 因此积累了大量的人生经验。

The answer is quite simple. They have been through stuff that we can't even imagine in their lifetimes. They have tons of experience in life.

除了这些,他们也是伟大的冒险者,他们喜欢仔细评估后进行冒险,这就使得他们在虚拟货币投资中成为鲸鱼,他们不害怕失去,同时他们也不担心获得的太多。

But apart from that, they are also great risk takers. They are willing to take risks after evaluating them closely. This is what makes them whales on the cryptocurrency scene. They are not afraid to lose. But they are not afraid to gain either.

他们不是贪婪的人,同时也不喜欢炫耀,我曾经和@laonie谈过,他是STEEMIT的新海豚,他每天都很积极,他们只是一般的公民,可是他们把钱都存储起来。他们有很多储蓄,他们有能力这样做,因为中产阶级在中国是新兴的阶级,日常消费仍然很便宜。

They are not greedy people. Nor are they the type to show off. I've talk to @laonie, a new dolphin on Steemit. He is powering up everyday. They are just average citizens. But, they save up. They save up A LOT. They have the ability to do so because the middle class is now emerging in China, and the cost of living is still cheap.

他们很聪明,在我年轻的时候,我认为所有中国人都很笨。他们说话的时候,听起来好像在吵架,看起来很不文明。可是事实并非如此,中国的学者是世界上最好的。他们有能力做一些令人吃惊的事情。

They are smart people. In my youth, I thought that all Chinese were dumb. When they talked, it sounded like that they were having an argument. They seemed uncivilized. But this is not the case. Chinese scholars are among the world's best, and they are capable of doing amazing things.

他们都是善良的人,无论贫穷还是富有都一视同仁,不会根据种族和信仰来判断一个人(当然总有一小部分人有偏见和歧视)。

They are kind people. They don't reject you because they are rich and you are poor. They don't judge people based on their race or religion(of course, there is always a small part of the population that is slightly prejudiced).


为什么中国人疯狂的投资虚拟货币?

Why are Chinese people rushing to invest in Crypto?

因为他们都是富有洞察力的投资者,他们知道未来会需要什么,无论走到那里,他们都给所到之处增添许多活力,从这里我们可以看出这批投资者是多么的强大,他们的生活很质朴,他们善于存钱,而不是用攒下的钱去购买奢侈品,这就是他们成功的原因。

Because they are keen investors, and they know what the future holds. Wherever they go, they create a hype. This shows how powerful this group of investors are.
They live modestly, although because they saved up instead of wasting their money on luxurious items. That's what makes them successful.

中国人在比特币采矿中占很大的比重。

The Chinese make up a large percentage of the bitcoin hash rate.

为什么中国人在STEEMIT中将占很大的部分?

Why are Chinese people going to be a huge part in Steemit?

在STEEMIT团队里已经出现了一些新的鲸鱼, 包括我联系过的@laonie,他们不仅为Steemit的经济进行了必要的投资,在短期内使STEEMIT的价格快速增长,并且他们会长期坚持,以@laonie为例,他对STEEMIT完全信任以至于他要全部投入来推动而不是持有,我完全支持他。

There is already a group of new whales that are present in the Steemit community, including @laonie, who I have personally talked to.
Not only are they making very needed investments in the Steemit economy, and bringing the price up in the short term, they are also in it for the long term. Take a look at @laonie. He believes in Steem so much that he is going ALL IN with powering up, instead of holding his Steem. And he has my full support.

另外,有许多人希望分享他们的故事。他们有能力制作出优秀的博客和内容。内容等于价值,在Steemit 上更多的内容就等于为Steemit 创造出更高的价值。中国人将为整个Steemit 团体创造出非常高的价值。请记住,短期的价格并不重要,长期价格才有意义。

They are also people with stories to tell. They are capable of creating great blogs and content. Content = Value. More content on Steemit = More value for Steemit. And the Chinese will create for the whole Steemit community a load of value. Remember, the short term price doesn't matter. It's the long term that does.

中国人可以为大家带来文化多元化。越多来自不同文化的人参与到Steemit越好。中国是一个了不起的起跑点。让我们大家欢迎所有的Steemit 的参与者。这个帖子的原作者是@jholdsworthy. 你可以在这里找到原文。https://steemit.com/steemit/@jholdsworthy/2lw4hu-i-used-to-hate-china-but-now-i-love-it-and-why-they-ll-be-a-huge-part-of-the-steemit-revolution

The Chinese will bring cultural diversity. The more countries that are participating in Steem, the better. And China is a great starting point.

Let's welcome all new Steemers together.

This post was originally written by @jholdsworthy.
You can find the original story here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@jholdsworthy/2lw4hu-i-used-to-hate-china-but-now-i-love-it-and-why-they-ll-be-a-huge-part-of-the-steemit-revolution

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Great initiative! But "interesting" content is subjective.
Just a suggestion: why not distribute SD to the original author from your translated post especially if the original author did not get enough upvotes in the first place? Original authors gets more credit, i suppose? Just like how harry potter book series are translated into many languages and J. K. Rowling still gets some credit as original author?

I gave her permission to reuse my article, so really I shouldn't expect any rewards for it. After all, she was the one who translated it and got the publicity, not me.

But I would obviously love to see me getting some reward as well especially since the original article got around half of what this article got. I guess this incentivizes more quality content, as not only you are getting promoted as an author, you are also getting some tangible rewards. Pretty sure @jacor and some others are doing this except in English.

I am in full support of this initiative, since it will get some more content for Chinese people to look at.

It's up to her to decide whether she wants to give me the SBD and keep the SP - or not. I don't mind either way, just asserting my opinion.

Thanks for your input @coinbitgold! I have mentioned this with other authors that gave me permission to use their content and asked about sharing rewards : This is a pilot project so I did not know how successful it would be and if the rewards that I received would even be enough to cover the cost of my translation time, formatting the posts time, finding great posts, and reaching out to everyone. I mentioned to these authors that I was still working out whether or not there would be enough rewards to share with the authors and was still figuring out how much I would share and how. I'm not doing this to get large rewards - I am doing this to create a bridge between the Chinese and English speakers on Steemit. However, I do also need to cover my costs of all the time it takes to coordinate and create this project and these posts.
In terms of interesting content, I agree with you, it is completely subjective! :-) I am basically curating on a couple points: 1) if it will appeal to the Chinese reader userbase (such as @jholdsworthy's wonderful post). 2) if it is a wonderfully original piece on Steemit that could use some more spotlight .
Back to curation rewards : I do not expect the rewards for upcoming posts to be as large as this one, as this post also acted as my "announcement of new project post". However, I do want to provide rewards to the wonderful original authors. So, I will provide the authors 25% of SD made on my posts. However, it will not be on a post by post basis. I will pool 25% of all the SD that I make on all of my Chinese translation posts over the course of two weeks and then evenly distribute it to all of the original authors. I am doing this because I occasionally get whale votes that skyrockets one of my post rewards, however I think that all of the posts that I am translating are equally wonderful and deserve an equal payout.

anwenbaumeister, this is a fantastic idea and I support you wholeheartedly in initiating this project. I am deeply honoured that you would like to translate one of my posts, and really looking forward to seeing what my words look like in Chinese! The last paragraph you wrote on the comment above is exactly the kind of attitude I resonate with, and I applaud you for it :o)


I appreciate your efforts. But I'm not optimistic in the result.
Chinese readers are not in the lack of posts of high qulaity.
The ultimate problem is Chinese users can't register steemit.com.
They're blocked from the GFW.

Good idea. I posted a suggestion in Steem ideas here
https://steemit.com/steemit/@dennygalindo/need-a-way-for-chinese-to-login-w-o-facebook-reddit

Comment on the post if you have a better in then Douban QQ and Renen.

Yes, the big problem is Chinese users can't use facebook. so millions of potential users can't register.

in china, if you don't use vpn, you can't use facebook, google, twitter.
steemit? of course not!

exactly. It took me a lot of times to register an account here. I am living in China. But I love to read posts in steemit. It is annoyed to access here. Another issues is that this platform don't offer language option. Hopefully this platform will cater the need of Chinese.

All you need to be able to do is have access to the Steem blockchain via a seed node! Then, you can host your own 'local' version of Steemit that you would be able to access.

@xianjun Thank you so much for bringing a great point up. I was not aware that it was that big of a problem, I thought that Chinese users could use a VPN. I really hope that solutions will soon arise. There is some great high quality chinese content already, I just want to expand the content and also provide a bridge between Chinese and English speaking users :-)

hi @anwenbaumeister , this is probably the last reply in 7 days (check my latest post if curious). anyway, just want to let you know that I will be interested in joining you (outsourced or whatever) as this is also my idea but just don't have time to do this. I have quite some years' experience in translating En/Chn both ways. Pls let me know how we might work together if you should need more people to join. It is also quite interesting to me to see if we can work together over steemit/blockchain and achieve something great. ciao for now!

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

Hello An Wen.

Great initiative that you are taking. I hope Steemit can liberate China's and the world's censorship. And hopefully Chinese people will flock in to invest in Steems also. Investing in steem is also owning a part of the steemit project. Owning their right of freedom of speech. :)

Chhay

China is a whale of a country. I have witnessed first hand how they move the market in several aspects. The US economy is already stimulated so much by Chinese activity! I agree that we have to embrace a global attitude if we want the decentralized nature of Steemit to flourish. If we limit what is popular to just English, it is automatically centralized in the language aspect.

Sinceramente, desde los estados unidos :)

I love your spirit and enthusiasm! It's always the youth who most inspire me these days. Thank you for thinking big.

Good idea!
I hope soon we can filter languages, and steemit can go international!

@spiz0r, totally agree filters would be a game changer.

@anwenbaumeister, great idea! Doing the reverse I think would be beneficial as well - curating really good and interesting Chinese language posts into English :)

Thanks for contacting me for this project. I felt kind of honoured since I been reading you quite a while. Good luck with the project!! I could do the same in Spanish actually...

Great initiative and i'm trying to do the same thing with the Italian community so I UPVOTED you cause we share the purpose.
I'd love if you can take a look at my last article and share your experience with a comment https://steemit.com/writing/@frick/why-do-we-write-on-steemit

Wonderful idea! I have visited China twice and spent a total of two months there. Fabulous country and people. Thank you for taking the initiative to translate excellent posts.

I think this is a great idea, Anwen!

Welcome to all our Chinese friends; we are very happy to have you here on Steemit!

Great post once again. The Chinese are an investment monster so always good to have them on board. :)

Let's hope that upon the onset of chinese whales, they will also upvote english content and authors.

This is a wonderful idea and I hope you get the support of the community. Once the language barrier is overcome, steemit should then be ready to take on the world!

Welcome. Welcome.
欢迎。欢迎。
From another bilingual poster.

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

very good idea. In addition, your translation could be usefull to people like me wishing to learn chinese. 希望你的计划很生产。谢谢

You should say 希望你的努力会成功。

Thanks, my chinese is still approximative. I know that chinese words are very precise, more than french and english ones, but I still don't know which ones to choose.

Yeah china is great, they managed to increase economic growth exponentially.

Wow! I wish I can understand just one sentence :) Maybe I should learn some day!

Fantastic initiative! Really good luck.

Great idea and very creative. Thinking outside the box on how to extend the Steem user base. The more users Steem has will make it more of a player in the space.

Yes. Great idea. Keep up the great work!

Ambitious idea, but I wonder if it's too ambitious, given that only one person will do all the translation work. There was mention of outsourcing but this will cost money.

So cool. Great idea!

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Nice writing @anwenbaumeister