05/14/2005
I discovered a interesting site in BlogChina - China SRI. The blog covered information on China’s Social responsibility Investment, CSR and society development. As I know, it is one of few website which dedicate on such kind of issues in China. The Author is a Ph.D candidate in Tsinghua university, here is a short description regarding to the site.
This blog is proposed to be an information exchange platform about CSR/SRI between China and the world. The founder comes from Tsinghua University,Beijing,China.
At the mention of CSR, here is another blog I should point out, CSR in China, which also is my long time favorite.
Tags: china, csr
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09/25/2004
Wikipedia today's feature article introduced my favorite Chinese poet: Du Fu.
Du Fu was a Chinese poet during the Tang Dynasty. Along with Li Po, he is frequently called the greatest of the Chinese poets. His own greatest ambition was to help his country by becoming a successful civil servant, but he proved unable to make the necessary accommodations. His life, like the country, was devastated by the An Lushan Rebellion of 755, and the last 15 years of his life were a time of almost constant unrest. Initially unpopular, his works came to be hugely influential in both Chinese and Japanese poetry.
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06/ 8/2004
A lot of confirms from Chinese Bloggers confirmed that Chinese Wikipedia was blocked in China. Through my refer system, I saw a dutch weblog "wikipeida benutzer" quote my previous post. Although I couldn't understand what he/she was talking about, I find a good link from his blog: Chinese Build Free Net Encyclopedia. After some of interviews with active contributors in Chinese wikipedia, the article point out why wikipedia was not blocked in China at that time, and predicted potential risks of blocking by Chinese censors.
One reason why Chinese Wikipedia has not been blocked by Chinese censors may be the site's insistence that all entries reflect a neutral point of view, a policy that defines all Wikipedia versions in other languages. The neutral point of view is intended to avoid editing wars between contributors competing to impose their interpretation of various subjects on other readers.
As Andrew Lih said:
"The site is not blocked en masse at the site level because its not obviously pro or against anything because of the neutral point of view policy,"
Another reason Chinese Wikipedia has not been blocked by Chinese censors may be its low profile and relatively small group of regular contributors. As the site gets more attention and attracts more contributors, Chinese censors may decide to block access to the site, giving an indication of how much exposure censors are willing to tolerate for a site like this,
I saw plenty of debates on
shizhao's
comment page (who is a pioneer Chinese wikipedian and a administrator of Chinese wikipedia), Some Taiwan contributors complained his arbitrary deletion on their works, most of them are caused by sensitive topics such as:
definition of Republic of China,
Taiwan's WHO bid etc. Actually here is a big culture conflict between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. There just only one version of Chinese wikipedia called "zhongwen" wikipeida, its include both two kinds of Chinese characters. So it's mean no major Chinese character was preferred on site. The problem is mainland Chinese and Taiwan Chinese have different practice to write in Chinese. It's kinda of complicate.
Another debate wave is on the political issue, These topics easily drive contributors lost their patients. Obviously, at this point, contributors (even visitors) were missing one of most important principle in wikipedia: Reflect neutral point of view.
Wikipedia is a very attractive project, I do appreciate they efforts on thousands of Chinese entries. I hope to see that more and more contributors join this project to represent professional information, But if people are focusing on debates to define what kind of major Chinese should be used in Chinese wikipeida, The project couldn't widely participate by others.
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05/27/2004
I saw some debates on a Free Culture review from Financial Times Chinese Edition in my friends blog. The translator had translated "Free Culture" to a misunderstanding Chinese name "免费文化". I'm not a pickly person but the name was totally misguide people to undersrand what is Free Culture. It forced me to worte a Email to clarify it. I'm not sure FT will correct the name if they accpect my suggestion. the only thing I can do is post my Email over here to correct it in virtual.
To Financial Times Chinese Edition Representative:
Refer to the article: 免费世界堕入艰难时代
I read this article translate from Mr. 李功文. It makes me feel incomprehensibly because of Mr. Li's unacceptable translations! How could this happen to post this misunderstanding translation article in Financial Times! Free Culture not means "免费文化". From the book and the wide well-known concept, we all understand that "free Culture" meaning should be translated to "自由文化". There is a big difference between "自由文化" and "免费文化" in Chinese understanding.
We met Lawrence Lessig (author of "Free Culture") a month ago in "China Digital Future" conference in UC Berkeley; after his keynote speaking, we talk with Mr. Lessig in our Free Culture Translation Project organized by SocialBrain.org. Please see link on these pages, you will find a lot of well-understanding information about Free Culture.
Actually the book is under CreativeCommons license which is a new concept of copyright license. The book we could download from internet for non-commercial purpose only. The type of CreativeCommons license for this book could be found in free-culture.cc site. The publisher penguin group is a pioneer supporter of open copyright. We believe that publish this book in UK or not is concerted by publisher, not Author.
The purpose of writing this email is to clarify the "Free Culture" meaning and point out the misunderstanding translation. Financial Times is widely honored from world wide readers and Medias. As readers, we expect an accurate and particular translation in Chinese version. We know that translation is not only directly from word surface, but also contain in meaning and extend from background knowledge.
Thanks and hope to see your professional opinions.
Kevin
184 Comments