What does tranlating TidBITS imply?

This page gives background information about translating TidBITS into Chinese. This work is done by volunteers that put high demands on themselves and each other. More people are always welcome, because more hands make a lighter job. If you feel like helping us we expect from you that you will give, each week, a few hours of your spare time to this work.

Currently, the work is distributed according to each translator's willing to take, i.e. you only translate when you feel like to do so. However, we may switch to mandatory-based, i.e. the coordinator assign an article to each translator in turn. Of course, it's not a problem if you skip one or two times because of holidays or because something else demands all your time. If we can recruit enough hands, you probably only have to translate a section every a few weeks.

About ourselves

The English TidBITS started in 1990, and in the course of time several groups in the world have started translating the magazine. The Chinese team started in Feb. 1996 and have been on and off. It waked up from the hibernation in 1998 and have been struggling to stay in business. In the course of time volunteers came and left, but the total occupation has always been low. We hope more volunteers will join us soon, otherwise the team may not last long.

As far as I know, our ages and backgrounds are very different. None of us is highly gifted in languages or is a whizzkid on computers, but most of us have a pleasant distortion in the linguistic part of the brains, and we like our Macs (which are also of all sorts).

Since there is no financial reward for the work, there is apparantly something else that binds the people. What exactly, is different for each of us. For some it means a fixed moment in the week of relaxing effort, for others the fun is in delivering each week a product that is read by many (unknown) people, and yet others just feel at home in the sociable group that we are.

About the job

As mentioned above, currently you only do the translation when you want to and suits you the best. Every Tuesday, right after the publication of the new English TidBITS, the coordinator will forward a table of content to the translators list. If one is interested in any of the sections, s/he announces on the same list, and then, preferably at least on Sunday, send the translation to the coordinator when it is done. The coordinator will put all translated articles together and publish it on the Web and mailing list. An abstract of the issue will also be published on the USENET newsgroup tw.bbs.comp.mac since it appears to be the largest Chinese mac user discussion channel.

The translation of an article (one section of an issue) takes about one evening. Sometimes the text is a bit harder to translate (e.g. due to difficult technical terms) orsimply too long. You are always welcome to ask your colleague translators for help (through our mailing list), and if that doesn't help we can just ask the American editors for help.

As a team, we are much dependant on each other. Therefore we ask you to claim a portion of each issue whenever yosu can.

Interested?

If all the previous text didn't scare you off, be welcome as a volunteer at the translation team TidBITS-Chinese. To join the Chinese team, send an email to <tidbits-b5-trans-on@tidbits.com>.You can also contact the current coordinator Fuan Tsai at <ft11@cornell.edu> if anything is still not clear to you.

Of course, the real work can still be a disappointment. If you want you will get a shorter part for your first translation, so you can first find out how you like it. Even after a few weeks you may find out that this isn't what you expected after all, and leave us without bad feelings. We thank you for every issue you do help us with and do not blame you for what you do not. But of course we hope that you will have as much fun in translating as we have, and that you will join us for a long time!

April 1999

The translation team TidBITS-Chinese