(Ecns.cn) – By using the collective wisdom and language skills of a community to translate Web content for subscribers, a number of Chinese crowdsourcing sites are in hot pursuit of a perfect profit model while also trying to avoid the pitfalls of copyright infringement.
Crowdsourced translation is a process by which tasks are assigned to a "crowd" of freelance and in-house translators after an agency tests for their availability.
Though sometimes staggering forward, such Web sites continue to find inspiration from the substantial number of users who welcome and support this method of providing different perspectives and voices from around the world.
By translating literary works, news stories, anecdotes, and other content, the sites have made autobiographies of internationally distinguished people and articles published in newspapers and periodicals such as The New York Times and The Economist only a click away. As a result, people no longer have to worry about language barriers and can directly read Chinese versions of such content with ease.
In a fascinating illustration of the success of crowdsourcing in China, major collaborative translation Web sites such as Yeeyan.org, Dongxi.net, hoopCHINA.com and Guokr.com have emerged and developed very rapidly in recent years. However, these sites also face many problems, such as piracy, censorship requirements and a large demand for global sources and materials. To sustain their operations, they may have to consider establishing lasting relationships with international companies and try to create more lucrative domestic opportunities.
From rewarding to crowdsourcing
It is notable that most of the articles translated from foreign sources on these sites retain their original ideas, and are unadulterated by polishing or cutting. On Yeeyan.org, for example, many have even quoted source links and presented readers with bilingual pages.
This indicates a high level of interface maturity, but it was not always this way. When these sites were starting out, the design could only be described as "premature," and the translation mode was not on the large scale that it is today.
Founded by three Chinese network engineers named Zhao Jiamin, Zhang Lei and Zhao Kai, Yeeyan has achieved much progress. In its early days, the site used a "reward" model for its volunteer translators, who got "loyalty points" for each task and could sometimes earn a limited amount of money if they received excellent user responses.
Later, Yeeyan began using a more cost-effective solution to its growing translation demand – crowdsourcing, which involves translation completed by a large pool of bilinguals on a volunteer or paid basis.
With such efforts, since its inception in 2006 the site has grown into a key gateway for Chinese speakers who want to follow international news. It has also been successful in attracting the attention of global news sources such as The Guardian and ReadWriteWeb.
Revenue and copyright
With the potential for large upsides, the good news is that these sites are making profits in various ways, which can at least sustain their operations.
According to Zhao Jiamin, co-founder of Yeeyan, the site began to achieve revenue goals in 2009, and the major income source has been English-Chinese translation services provided for media, including The Guardian and Forbes. Volunteer translators can also earn money in this way, said Zhao.
Meanwhile, Yeeyan has also tried to cooperate with domestic companies, successfully publishing the Chinese version of the autobiography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson and some 20 other books in 2011. This is a new field that Yeeyan will focus on in the future, revealed Zhao. Four months ago, Yeeyan also launched a digital publishing program and started to upload its translation works to Apple's App Store.
It was reported by Nanfang Weekend that Guokr.com has similar plans to publish translated literary works. This year it has published four books on popular science, comprised mostly of articles from its site as well as Songshuhui.net, a collaborative blog focused on popular science for the general public.
However, all of these Web sites face one particularly serious problem – copyright infringement. In October of 2010, Yuan Li, managing editor of the Chinese edition of WSJ.com, went into angry negotiations with Yeeyan.org over the translation of an article she had written, which Li argued had been published without authorization.
Seeking value beyond business
Readers of crowdsourcing translation Web sites usually think the value of user generated content (UGC) lies not only in the business scale, but also in the multiple choices it offers.
For example, the image of basketball player Yao Ming in Chinese media is quite different from that depicted in American sports media, which one can read about on hoopCHINA.com, because the translation is absolutely faithful to the original article.
In this regard, Yeeyan has run into trouble in the past. In late 2009, the site was shut down for several months after it published news translated from foreign sources without being licensed, which Zhao Jiamin referred to as a "technical foul."
Now, however, its editors and users are working hard to carefully protect Yeeyan, and Zhao claims the site will never publish overly radical content or extreme views in the future.
