Title: The importance of translation in the 21st century: Chinese Social Networks Name: Sara F.

Costa Degree: Master Institution: ESECS IPL E-mail: sara.costa@ipleiria.pt Key-words: New Media, Translation Studies, China, Social Networks, Plurilingualism, New Media Studies

Abstract: This publication/communication focuses on the concept of online magazines approaching Chinese social media originated from Internet. It's a reflection about the importance of translation in new forms of online publications. It also aims to present a concrete project and describe the process of writing pieces. At some point it intends to open a discussion about the current access to information in China. Additionally to the reflection about media, there is a reflection about the extreme relevance of multilingualism and the study of foreign languages in contemporary information networks.

The importance of translation in the 21st century: Chinese Social Networks

1 - Introduction - The Internet: no time, no space, no identity. Internet completely changed the way we share information during 20 and 21st century. Internet brings with it a myriad arsenal of analysis tools and social anthropology. The way that each society meets its needs in the cyber world can be a very interesting reflection of the socio-cultural and political identity of a country. Since online portals from blogs to social networks are becoming more and more user-friendly, Internet gradually make it reachable for everyone, allowing anonymous voices to be heard, independently from publications more traditionally institutionalized. Language skills make it possible to break through the reality of Chinese microblogging platforms and report to the outside what is really going on at the soul of netizensi. Apart from the language issue, the Orwellian filtersii issue also come across the institutionalized Chinese media. In order to obtaining a genuine portrayal of Chinese society this vehicle of translation becomes really enlightening. Magazines devoted to online communication of Chinese reality based on observation of Chinese social networks its a unique way of communication between concrete experiences selected from Chinese internet (or intranet) helping readers to understand something that is exclusively in sinograms. These magazines intend to distribute information in a language more accessible to the West trough the use of English, as a humanizing bridge between West and East. In this communication I propose to consider the importance of translation and multilingualism in the era of social networks, presenting a concrete project, approaching the working process and also thinking about the concrete application of the internet translation in educational context and the role of a China expert in the contemporary context.

1.1 Internet Studies The analysis of the Internet and social networks has attracted the attention of many researchers. In a comprehensive study conducted by Mislove et al. we see a structural analysis of the platforms Orkut, Youtube and Flickr. iii In the conclusions of this study we can see how the shared online content modifies behaviors in certain social sphere, the so called social influence. This influence is characterized by the modification of interests and extends to personal habits. iv In a study conducetd by Agarwal et al. there is an approach to the strategies of influence in the blogosphere, concluding that the most active users do not always correspond to the most influential ones.
vii v

Backstrom analyzed the phenomenon of

vi

closure membership platform Livejournal. Wikipedia editors were organized.

Crandall et al. have focused on how

In the study by Cha et al. Twitter was studied in

comparison to the three different weights of influence considered in the world of social networking - indegree, retweets or mentions user. viii Regarding Chinese internet, a work of Yu et al. reflects about the cinematic, literary and musical interests of users at Douban platform (), a platform widely used by Chinese youth that includes comments, critics, events and discussion forums about leisure in China. ix Other studies compare between platforms western and Chinese platforms leading us to conclude that the content sharing on Sina Weibo is quite different from that commonly shared in social networks Westerners. In a paper written by Yu et al. x the conclusion is that while on twitter or facebook, the content shared follows recent events, in Sina Weibo we realize that the most popular topics are built solely through retweet of pictures from users as well as memesxi or other humorous content. In the description of the e-zine "Baidu beat" - named for the biggest search engine in China, Baiduxii - we read the following description: Chinas Internet culture is fascinating. The Web is where all the new Chinese memes are born, where celebritiesfor better or for worseare created, where new writers hone their skills, and where songs become hits. The Internet has become the crucible of contemporary Chinese culture, and is the de facto public sphere of Chinese life, where ideas are exchanged, often with remarkable candor.xiii

As the country doesnt have an alternative for open discussion on generic topics of civil society, the internet stands out as privileged access to content and opinions being so well regarded by the creators of the Baidu Beat as a " really public sphere "of Chinese society. While the phenomenon of social networks has been studied from a sociological point of view on the social relationship among various informational networks, this paper will focus on the importance of translation and the multilingualism as a need in social analysis.

1.2 Who is represented in Chinese Internet According to the International Telecommunication Union, Facebook has over 900 million registered users and about 200 million twitter while LinkedIn has 120 million users. This is therefore the generic picture of the number of users tthat access and use the main suppliers of western social networks. According to a survey conducted by the China Internet Network Information Center (NIC-CN), in July 2008 the number of internet users in China reached 253 million, surpassing the U.S. as the largest market of the internet. Studies show that the majority of the percentage of internet access comes from cities and is very low in rural areas.
xiv

According to CNNIC in 2010 cyberspace is dominated by young urban

students between 18 and 30 years of age. Alongside the Western reality - essentially covering Europe and America, we have for each platform a corresponding Chinese clone. For example, Tudou ( ) or Youku ( ) replaces Youtube and Renrenwang ( ) replaces Facebook, as we have Baidu () to replace the search engine Google. This need to have a clone platform reflects some cultural characteristics. It is a reflection of a society facing itself, which responds to domestic needs and develops a microcosm that doesnt melt with the external cosmos. We can say that Chinese Internet users move in a cyber cocoon.

The Chinese platform with more users is classified as a kind of hybrid of social networking between facebook and twitter: Sina Weibo ( ). It has over 300 million registered users, according to the statistics from February 2012. xv Sina Weibo was created in August 2009 by Sina Corportation. In July 2009 the Chinese government blocked access to Twitter and Fanfou ( ), the most prominent Chinese Twitter clone by that time. Sina Weibo is currently providing microblogging services accessible in China. Microblogging services are defined by status updates with limit characters (precisely 140 characters). Despite some differences in relation to some features Twitter has, the similarities between the platforms are quite obvious, hence the designation of "clone".

1.3 What are e-zines on Chinese new media Im going to present some of the publications that will be considered here as part of the group of electronic journals that reflect the Chinese new media. I made this selection based on the popularity of publications and how they differ in format but still have a common purpose. In the descriprion of "Baidu beat" we can read: Here at Baidu, as Chinas leading search engine, we sit at the white-hot center of the Chinese Internet. We get to see what, in aggregate, all those individual search queries add up to. We get to see what the hottest topics are on Baidu PostBar, the largest online community site in China. We get to see what questions are on the minds of the Chinese Internet users as reflected in Baidu Knows, our question and answer service. We get to see what videos people are searching for most. Its the mission of Baidus English blog, the Baidu Beat, to give you a peek into what Chinese Internet users are looking for online: Who theyre fascinated with, what theyre fighting about, whos making them laugh, and whats making them cry. This magazine displays an exhaustive list of the most searchable the daily content by Chinese netizens on Baidu - the largest Chinese search portal. Therefore, it gives us a perspective in real time of Chinese public opinion.

Below we have the three more searched words on 17 May 2012.

Top Ten Search List (May 17) Katy, Thursday, May 17th, 2012 Heres the top 10 real-time search list for today, recorded at 2 PM. 1. Choxin kuy Zhnggu ymn - On May 8th, a group of unidentified North Korean gunmen boarded four Chinese fishing boats from Dalian. One boat has been rescued, but the three remaining boats, holding 29 fisherman, are still being held captive for a total ransom of 1.2 million RMB. Heres the story in Chinese. 2. G Jngwn ch gu Alyssa Chia out of the closet: Since yesterdays search results, the spotlight seems to have stayed put on Taiwanese socialite Kong Chingping and Taiwanese television hostess and actress Alyssa Chia, whose status as a couple was exposed by the Chinese media this past weekend. Chia has publicly denied the rumors, but certain media outlets are now outing her themselves, apparently caring enough to insist upon and provide ample proof of her newly alleged sexual orientation. Heres the story in Chinese. 3. shuf z jin dinchng Powermonger alert: A private electricity plant reportedly run by the richest man in Shandong for use by his textile company, Shandong Weiqiao Group, on average pays only about one third of the price of electricity from the national grid. Over the past several years the resource-hoarding company has come to blows both with relevant government bodies and other local organizations over the enormous pricing gap. Heres the story in Chinese.

As we can seethe site lists the words in Chinese and in pinyin xvi , a brief explanation in English on the subject, and the give us the Chinese sources. The role of translation is fundamental here to build the bridge between the behaviors of virtual netizens, giving to the Western readers the possibility of studying the virtual phenomena of the Internet in China without having to be able to read it in the original language. Another example of e-zine is "China Geeks" (http://chinageeks.org/) whose subtitle is "Translation and Analysis of Modern China". This magazine is always looking for collaboration from people able to build the Chinese-English bridge. In the description of the magazine, the portal speaks of the possibility of creating a "community". It let us to rethink the role of the expert in China at this time, a kind of definition of modern sinologist regarded as a geek of China:

ChinaGeeks is a website about China. We post articles, original essays, translations, news, and relevant links to further the English-language discourse on China. Topics covered include (but are not limited to) history, current events, politics, literature, culture, and philosophy. We take pride in our writing standardseverything you find here will be well-written and worth your time (we hope!) Were also striving to create a community here; a community that embraces the many people throughout the world who (1) speak English and (2) are interested in China. Please join us, and leave us a comment or even join our team of contributors! Both of the above two publications as well as the one I will explore in more detail in the next section, focus on acknowledging the social reality of the Chinese point of view of regular people and the dominant urban youth culture. However, many publications focus on commercial purposes, trying to help the foreign businessmen to define the profile of Chinese consumers based on information available online. This is the case of Jing Daily (http://www.jingdaily.com/): Over the past decade, China has emerged as a global economic power. With a middle class now roughly equivalent to the entire U.S. population (and growing), Chinas consumer market is among the worlds largest. But for Westerners looking to do business there or to simply understand the contemporary culture China can be a confusing, contradictory, extremely fast-moving, and at times contentious place.

Much more subjects could be discussed in a comparatist study above all the publications in this field. However, as the purpose of this communication is to think the role of translation in the preparation of these publications, I shall concentrate on a particular project and a teaching experience in language teaching.

2 - The Tea Leaf Nation Project Making sense of China through social media The about section at Tea Leaf Nation website: Over 250 million people use Chinese social media, many every day. We manually distill its best, most interesting stories. So you can sip them like your morning tea, instead of chugging from a fire hose.xvii ()We aspire to be a must-read source for China experts of all stripesjournalists, diplomats, academics, analystswhile remaining fun and accessible to casual China watchers. Above all, we hope to deliver content that brings China to life, humanizing the countless millions behind the text. This is how it pursues the idea of distill the information that arrives daily from the online platforms with over 250 000 users attending the Chinese cyberspace without, however, dehumanize the voices millions behind and making it accessible to all sorts of people interested in the publication, from experts to casual observers.

2.1 Writing to Tea Leaf Nation First we try to see what are the , ie, the topics of greatest popularity that can be found on the right side of the website. At this stage, it is important that the writer of the article has the notion of what may be new. The selection of content always tries to move from statements of netizens or official articles of official Sina Weibo to a broader reflection on the subject.

For example, for an article from 23 March on the growing advertising problem on textbooks, some of the comments collected and translated for me were:
@ ##

@ lamented, This wonderful country has everything: abortion advertising on the bus, sexual transmitted disease advertising on the street, Viagra ads, now we have publicity in teaching materials.

@##

@ exclaimed, How creative! Little students can already be gynecological hospital consumers?!

@ LCQ##

LCQ tweeted sarcastically, This is also a way of education! In my time we didnt have this kind of thing. I would also like to learn about sexual education!
@Yuni ##

@Yuni wrote, Chinese language is profound with rich connotations. This is just an image and it can be just a coincidence.
@_##

@_ chastised commenters, writing that Perverts see obscenity everywhere. With further research, I managed to get the official information about the issue by the news platform on Sina Weibo. However, the most important topic of the piece was the opinions netizens raised about this issue. After reading and collected different reactions in the social network, all this information was compiled and inserted into the article Voices Keep Ads Out Of Our Texbooks xviii.

2.2 What contents in Chinese Social Networks e-zine Like in any other publication, the contents are oriented by the editor. The educational background of each writer also influences the writing ability. As in the team we have people graduated in international law or political science, it is natural that the issues in this field could interest them more. My education is mostly on cultural and linguistic aspects, so my pieces would focus more on changing social phenomena from the point of view of collective psychology and reflection on social change in youngest sphere of society. Topics such as those that relate to consumerism, marketing, freedom of expression in antagonism with reflections of conservatism, the status of the state of law, manifest forms of unreported - which can range from simple discontent strikes or other kind of repression would catch more easily the attention of the editors. From this point of view, we can speak in activist journalism. However, this is not the essential purpose of most of the e-magazines. As the editor David Wertime recalls "Our primary goal is to act as a humanizing bridge between east and west." The themes that emerge, come-on, however, shamelessly describing the social and political reality of the country as it is. For example, an article by David Wertime of April 3

addresses the issue of censorship in Chinas Twitter Comes Roaring Back After Government Blackout xix.

3. Translating Chinese social networks: pedagogic application in the practice of translation Having exposed a reflective perspective on the importance of publications that distill the information of Chinese social media, in this part of the communication I propose to observe the impact of the pedagogical exercise of translating Chinese social networks. I intended to analyze the feelings of a sample of sixteen students with Chinese language skills in Portuguese. They were asked to write some articles using the process of developing pieces as the one described above. They were asked to rank from one to five the feelings about the task. The chart reflects the average score for each response given by students.

Sparked my interest in journalistic writing. Increased my ability to select relevant information. Increased my ability to synthesize information. It made me aware of to different political realities. It made more aware of cultural differences. It made me more aware of people's opinion. It made me think about the process of translation. I learned more oral language and slang. It extended my lexical study for one used by younger people. Increased my ability to write in a foreign language. Guided my lexical field for a less formal language. Increased my motivation to translate. 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5

Data Analysis Taking these results, we can see that the students felt that this type of exercise works their capabilities of as well as capabilities related to select relevant information. Moreover, this kind of exercises guides them for a less formal lexical field and makes them think about the process of translation. It also highlights the fact that the students felt that the exercise increased their motivation to translate. Since the study group was composed by Chinese students, it was expected that they wouldnt be so sensitive about social or political differences, something that could be different if the study were conducted using Portuguese students. The learning of oral language also does not appear highlighted, although the way the comments are made in social networks are written in a very oral language. Perhaps the fact that the exercise

was conducted in a written format, it didnt contribute so much to the development of this competence. Although the experience is positive for certain characteristics of journalistic writing skills, the work didnt sparkle a special interest in the journalistic writing. 4. Final conclusions The new forms of publications using the internet are a phenomenon worth to be observed from the standpoint of academic studies about new media studies in general. Specific publications that address the Chinese reality are an essential part of the observation for experts and analysts related to Chinese studies. It certainly help to humanize and enable efficient access to information overcoming the "Great Firewall of China " and overtaking the Chinese language barrier. Of course the language barrier transposed into English becomes a second language barrier somehow. From this point of view, I believe that the translation projects of Chinese new media into other languages may contribute to a qualitative development of Chinese studies at the national level. Helping students observe and analyze the internet phenomenon in a broader observation might be a very interesting experience.

Netizen: Internet citizen. David Wertime The Great Firewall Thickens: Rumors of Foreign Site Blackout in China

ii

http://tealeafnation.com/2012/04/the-great-wall-and-the-plot-thickens-rumors-of-foreign-siteblackout-in-china/
iii

A. Mislove, M. Marcon, K. P. Gummadi, P. Druschel, and B. Bhattacharjee. Measurement and analysis

th

of online social networks. In Proceedings of the 7 SIGCOMM Conference on Internet Measurement, pages 29{42. ACM, 2007.
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M. McPherson, L. Smith-Lovin, and J. M. Cook. Birds of a feather: homophily in social networks. Annual

Review of Sociology, 27(1):415{444, 2001.

v

N. Agarwal, H. Liu, L. Tang, and P. S. Yu. Identifying the Influential Bloggers in a Community. WSDM'08,

2008.
vi

L. Backstrom, D. Huttenlocher, J. Kleinberg, and X. Lan. Group formation in large social networks:

membership, growth, and evolution. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, pages 44{54. ACM, 2006.

vii

D. Crandall, D. Cosley, D. Huttenlocher, J. Kleinberg, and S. Suri. Feedback e ects between similarity

and social influence in online communities. In Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining, pages 160{168. ACM, 2008.
viii

M. Cha, H. Haddadi, F. Benevenuto, and K. P. Gummadi. Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The

Million Follower Fallacy. In Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, May 2010.[9] CNNIC.
ix

L. Yu and V. King. The evolution of friendships in chinese online social networks. Social Computing /

IEEE International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust, 2010 IEEE International Conference on, 0:81{87, 2010.
x xi

Bernardo A. Huberman, Louis Yu, Sitaram Asur, What trends in Chinese Social Media, July 2011 Meme: commonly used word to describe humoristic concepts released exclusively on the internet and

in particular in social networks.

xii

A Baidu () is the third largest search engine in the world and the one dominant in People's

Republic of China, surpassing even Google and Yahoo!. The name is originated from the poem Xin Qiji, written during the Song Dynasty.
xiii xiv xv

Baidu Beat About http://beat.baidu.com/?page_id=2 CNNIC. Survey report on internet development in rural china (in chinese), 2010. Cao, Belida Sinas Weibo Outlook Buoys Internet Stock Gains: China Overnight

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-28/sina-s-weibo-outlook-buoys-internet-stock-gains-in-n-ychina-overnight.html
xvi xvii xviii

System of Romanization used for Chinese. Tea Leaf Nation About http://tealeafnation.com/about-us/ Costa, Sara Voices Keep ads out of our textbooks http://tealeafnation.com/2012/03/voices-keep-

ads-out-of-our-textbooks/
xix

Wertime, David, Chinas Twitter Comes Roaring Back After Government Blackout

http://tealeafnation.com/2012/04/chinas-twitter-comes-roaring-back-after-govt-blackout/
xix

Cao, Belida Sinas Weibo Outlook Buoys Internet Stock Gains: China Overnight

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-28/sina-s-weibo-outlook-buoys-internet-stock-gains-in-n-ychina-overnight.html

Some examples of E-magazines about Chinese Social Networks: Baidu Beat http://beat.baidu.com/ China Digital Times http://chinadigitaltimes.com China Geeks http://chinageeks.org/ China Hearsay http://www.chinahearsay.com/

China Hush http://www.chinahush.com/ China Media Project http://cmp.hku.hk/ China Musings http://chinamusings.com/ China Talking Points http://www.chinatalkingpoints.com/ Dan Wei http://www.danwei.com/ Digi Cha http://digicha.com/ Off beat China http://offbeatchina.com/ Sinocism http://www.sinocism.com/ Tea Leaf Nation http://tealeafnation.com/ The Shanghaiist http://shanghaiist.com/
xix xix xix

Sistema de romanizao da lngua chinesa. Tea Leaf Nation About http://tealeafnation.com/about-us/ Costa, Sara Voices Keep ads out of our textbooks http://tealeafnation.com/2012/03/voices-keep-

ads-out-of-our-textbooks/
xix

Wertime, David, Chinas Twitter Comes Roaring Back After Government Blackout

http://tealeafnation.com/2012/04/chinas-twitter-comes-roaring-back-after-govt-blackout/