Confessions of a C-list Blogger

Two days ago, I translated an excerpt of the protest letter against Sina written by prominent lawyer-bloggers.  The post is literally a drop in the blog ocean.

Again it is ESWN's full translation and comment which bring the story to the English-speaking world: Time's China Blog profiles the authors of the open letter; Rebecca MacKinnon sees global media coverage coming ...

*  *  *

Coincidentally, Mr Soong blogs on the secret network between China Digital Times, China Media Project and himself: an existing network of bloggers who communicate with each other on a regular basis and exchange information along the lines: "Are you translating this article?"  The whole point is "to avoid unnecessary duplication".

Network, yes.  But Secret?  Certainly not - at least not a secret for me, an outsider.  It does not take a media observer to tell you that there is a tacit understanding between the big guns.

In fact, every time before I translate a Chinese material, I religiously check these websites: if it has already been translated, I shall not needlessly embarrass myself.  If, however, I am lucky enough to discover a new world, I must act quickly: only Chairman Mao knows if ESWN will get the job done when I am still double-checking the pinyin spelling!

*  *  *

Marx says that statistics is the opium of the bloggers.  This China blog, albeit blocked by the Nanny, is doing all right: 300,000 pageviews since August 2005; some 300 feed subscribers; Google PageRank of five ...

But effects of the opium will wear off, and the question of "what's the point" will loom large.

In this Sina case, to take but one example, my translation is not only incomplete, but quite redundant.

But I am a believer of the butterfly effect.  For me it is not that difficult to find the point.

Writing a blog post, I tell myself, is like flapping the butterfly's wing on the web.

Comments

[China Law Blog]

I wholeheartedly concur. In fact, every translation is different and brings a piece of the translator to the table. Keep up the good work.

[Tom - 大肚腩]

And some translations are more trustworthy than others.

[Tom - 大肚腩]

P.S. and as I mentioned in your other posts on the Sins of Sina, SCMP got to the story (front page Sunday edition) before Roland, so to sugget that Roland's translation brought it to the English-language world displays a seriously flawed timeline.

[lfc]

大肚腩, points taken.

In fact when I wrote this post, I did actually note that the Sina story was featured on SCMP's homepage. Timeline:-

Feb 10: LfC
Feb 11: SCMP
Feb 12: ESWN

Is it accurate to say that "it is ESWN ... which bring[s] the story to the English-speaking world"? Yes and no.

In a sense the assertion must be flawed because it was LfC which first translated the open letter. Alas, the leverage of this blog is so minimal.

SCMP, I believe, has a similar problem. Not that SCMP itself is as hopelessly irrelevant as LfC, but that SCMP is a gross failure on the web. It requires subscription; its articles cannot be linked to; nor can they be googled! How many subscribers does SCMP have?

ESWN is open to all and linkable. Rebecca MacKinnon apparently picked up the protest from Mr Soong. So did the Time Blog. Boing Boing then stepped in. They invariably point to ESWN’s translation and comment. I therefore fail to see why a correction is necessary.

[Tom - 大肚腩]

The fact that Rebecca McKinnon points to Roland is a matter of friendship, not necessarily one of being the driver of media. Boing Boing followed Rebecca, and if she didn't point to Roland and SCMP had been free to all, then it would be a much different story. (and it seems rumours are surfacing of SCMP going in this direction).

And it could easily be that your original post prompted SCMP to do the follow up work and actually interview the lawyers. Don't discount such matters as people notice, even if you don't get links from ESWN.

But to suggest that Roland brought it to the English-language press is false as the English-language press had it before Roland. (and my guess is that Roland actually picked it up from the English-language press since it was a front-page article on Sunday, so any press critic would have noticed it on a pile of papers without even having to flip through the paper.)

[eswn]

Let's state for the public record just what happened in this case (and I usually do not disclose how these things work at all). The following is my recollection of the Skype chat session:

Rebecca MacKinnon pointed ESWN to the open letter from the lawyer-bloggers. She asked: "Are you translating this?"

ESWN replied: "I was not going to do this because this is a hopeless chase. Nothing is going to happen unless the Sina.com celebrity bloggers join in and they won't. However, if you believe that this is important, I will get it translated."

Rebecca MacKinnon: "Great! It'll save me some time."

The rest is history. This is about mutual support/division of labor among bloggers who appreciate the value of each other, as opposed to a blogger launching personal attacks on other bloggers without having any idea about what was going on.

As for the SCMP bit, the ESWN philosophy is always this -- SCMP can only describe, quote or paraphrase a certain primary document. Wouldn't you rather read the thing in full in all its glorious details? Why should you accept someone's synopsis when you can read the whole thing?