《纽约时报》对Eco Team的报道

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/business/media/02economist.html

Volunteers Put the Economist Into Chinese
志愿者们将《经济学人》译成中文

By ANDREW BAIO
Published: March 1, 2009

Every day, Chinese fans produce unauthorized translations of Western pop culture products and put them online, like subtitled episodes of “Heroes” or the final Harry Potter novel. But a group calling itself the Eco Team has picked a more cerebral target: the British newsweekly The Economist.

每天，众多中国英语爱好者自发地将一些西方热门文化作品译为中文发布在网上，例如为电视剧《英雄》配上字幕，或是翻译小说《哈利·波特》的完结篇。而一个自称为Eco Team的翻译团队则将更专业的目标锁定在了英国周刊杂志–《经济学人》。

With each new issue, the group’s members work together to sharpen their language skills by translating the magazine from cover to cover.

每当新一期的杂志发布，团队的成员就分工合作、逐篇翻译，以此来提高自己的翻译技能。

The group meets on a message board at ecocn.org/bbs that is led by Shi Yi, a 39-year-old insurance broker in Beijing. “Different people come from different backgrounds with their own purpose,” Mr. Yi said. “But we all like the style of The Economist.”

译员们通过ecocn.org/bbs这个网上论坛沟通交流，这个论坛由一名来自北京的39岁保险经纪人施轶创办，在他看来，虽然译员来自不同的专业背景，拥有各自的目标，但大家都是因为喜爱《经济学人》而聚集到了一起。

Thirty to 40 of the group’s members work on each issue, Mr. Yi said. On the message board, they interweave paragraphs of English and Chinese text and collaborate on the translations. The final versions are bundled into Eco Weekly, a publication in the PDF format that is released biweekly and can be freely downloaded and printed.

施轶向我们介绍说，每期的翻译工作由30-40名团队成员共同完成，在论坛上，他们以中英文逐段对照翻译的形式完成翻译稿。最终，所有的译稿被合成在一个PDF格式的文件中，即《经济学人杂志中文版》，该译本每两周发布一次，并且允许网友免费下载和打印。

The translators know they are taking a political risk. The Chinese authorities have ripped controversial articles about China out of some issues of The Economist before they hit the stands there. In 2002, a full issue was banned.

译员们深知他们所承担的政治风险。中国政府曾先入为主、和谐了《经济学人》某几期杂志中一些对中国的评论具有争议的文章。2002年中甚至有一期被整本封禁。

As a result, several topics are taboo. In its published guidelines, the Eco Team bans articles about China’s relationship with Taiwan, Tibet, Falun Gong and the Tiananmen Square protests.

因此，有些话题谈不得。在Eco Team的发布规范中，凡涉及中国大陆与台湾的关系、西/藏、法/轮/功以及抗议事件的文章是被禁止的。

Articles about China’s restrictions on the news media are also off limits, as is discussion of the “Great Firewall of China,” a system used to block some Internet content. “Political issues are quite sensitive in current China,” Mr. Yi said. “We do not want to make any trouble to irritate the government.”

有关中国对媒体新闻的严格管制的文章也是一大禁区，这样一个用于屏蔽某些特定网络信息的体系被人们称作”中国的网上长城”。施轶表示，在当代中国，凡涉及政治的话题都相当敏感，我们不希望与政府产生任何不愉快的矛盾。

So far, neither the Chinese authorities nor The Economist has tried to stop the noncommercial, volunteer effort. Mr. Yi said that he had met members of the magazine’s staff, including its editor, John Micklethwait, and that they had granted their approval. A spokesman for The Economist, Justin Hendrix, was unable to confirm that arrangement as of Sunday night.

到目前为止，无论是中国政府还是《经济学人》杂志都没有试图终止这样一项非盈利的、纯属志愿性质的工作。施轶透露他拜访过一些《经济学人》杂志的员工，包括《经济学人》主编John Micklethwait，并获得了他们的许可。但是，杂志发言人Justin Hendrix却未能在周日晚间证实该消息。

Meanwhile, the group is hard at work on the 50th issue of Eco Weekly. Who needs the latest episode of “Lost” when a cover story on the fate of European unity awaits?

与此同时，Eco Team正加紧翻译第50期《经济学人杂志中文版》。考虑到当下那篇有关欧盟命运的封面文章还等着人来翻译，谁还去稀罕《迷失》的最新一集呢？

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作者ANDREW BAIO博客上更详细的报道见这里。