By Shawn Shieh

We are delighted to announce the starting up of China Development Brief (English) this
year in cooperation with the Beijing Civil Society Development Research Center
(BCSDRC) which publishes the Chinese-language CDB.

As
many of you know, the English-language CDB discontinued operations in
2007.  The loss of CDB came at a time when China’s civil society was going
through significant growth and changes.  We lost a source of valuable
information when we needed it most.

CDB (English) was started to address the gap left by the English-language
CDB.   Our mission is to improve understanding and cooperation
between the international community and China’s growing civil society sector,
and in turn, to give that sector a greater voice in the international
community.

For those who knew the English-language CDB, CDB (English) is not a reincarnation
of the old English-language CDB.  We are a new platform under the BCSDRC
and will provide edited translations of the Chinese-language CDB’s
reports.

For those who do not know the Chinese-language CDB, it is a unique resource, one of
the very few sources of independent, informed reporting on China’s civil
society for most of the last decade.  We felt it was time to make their
coverage accessible to a wider international audience that is interested in
following developments in the grassroots, voluntary, nonprofit sector in China.

During the next few months, we will be constructing a website, applying for funding
and putting together a special inaugural issue on New Trends in Philanthropy
and Civil Society in China.  We are calling in this email for volunteer
translators to help us with this special issue, and with providing content for
the website, by translating selected articles from CDB.  We are told this
method has a name: “crowdsourcing” or outsourcing to a crowd of
people.  Obviously, we hope to lower costs by outsourcing translation to a
community of volunteers.  But we also hope “crowdsourcing” will
create a community of people who, in the act of translating, will learn more
about the civil society sector in China, and perhaps want to take part in it
and support it.

We are attaching a list of articles for the special issue here, along with a Style
Guide and FAQs for translators, so you can see what is involved.  Those
interested in translating should be able to read Chinese newspapers with the
help of dictionary.  We already have translators for almost all of the 12
articles, and now need reviewers for the 12 articles being translated.
Reviewers will be the second pair of eyes that will go over the translation for
accuracy and readable, fluid English.  Reviewing will likely take less
time than translating.

If you are interested in translating or reviewing one of the articles for our special
issue, please email me at shawn.shieh@chinadevelopmentbrief.cn and let us know which article(s) you
are interested in translating or reviewing.  An interest in more than one
article is appreciated in case the article you choose is already taken by
someone else.   We are looking to produce the issue by May/June, so we’d
like to have the translations completed by the end of April which would give
you at at least two months. Reviewers will then have another month to look the
translations over.

I would also like to hear from you if you do not have time or interest in
translating for the special issue, but would like to sign up as a volunteer
translator and be notified about upcoming articles that need to be
translated.  There is no commitment to signing up.  It just means you
will be notified about upcoming articles that need to be translated and/or
reviewed.

If you know of others who would be interested in volunteering, feel free to forward
this email to them.  I look forward to hearing from you, and working with
you on this project,

This is a group email and you were included because you had intentionally or
unintentionally expressed an interest in China’s civil society, or because I
thought you might be interested for other reasons.  If you would like to
be taken off this group email, please reply with “unsubscribe” in the
subject line.

Best wishes,

Shawn

Shawn Shieh PhD is an editor for China Development Brief and a visiting professor at the Institute for the International Education of Students (IES).