Assistance Sought

[ryan]

Dear all,

Sorry for not being active in the forum, ever.

For those who were interested, for the past few years, I have been involved in a number of web stuffs from other places. Over the past 20 months, I'm back to HK Cinema by have my own blog at MySinaBlog located at http://hongkongfilms.mysinablog.com/

The blog is relatively personal-styled on matters on Hong Kong Cinema, not only limited to Hong Kong films but also other sutffs related to the HK Cinema industry including film festivals, film distribution and promotion. It's in Chinese, my mother tongue.

At first, I don't expect anything. The blog usually has 0-3 articles a day and we tried our best to write different topics as far as we can. From time to time, we got message being asked if there could be an English version of the blog.

For us, while we could be able to write in English, but we are not the most suitable group to make it. For those who can read in Chinese in that blog, you may wish to note the style and tone is different from anything I made before. It would be extremely difficult for non-native English speaker to make in English. In addition, it would be a duplicated task if we make both version on our own.

In this connection, while I am posting here again, I would like to seek assistance from all of you to see if you would be interested to have the English version of the blog. While some of the topics are "too local", you may also wish to justify if we would make English version for all articles or part of the articles related to Hong Kong films and box office. The most important thing, is the help for translation.

I understand it is not an easy task, but since I still believe there will still be some help and I hope there will be some help.

For those who would like to assist, please kindly e-mail me direct at "ryan.kr at gmail dot com". You may also wish to pass the message ot other places if you wish.

Thanks for all your assistance.

Regards,

Ryan
Blog Owner, http://hongkongfilms.mysinablog.com/

[Brian Thibodeau]

I would kill to be able to read your blog in English. I'd also like to see those photos adorn the English side of the HKMDB, perhaps on the home page as in the old days, or have permission to add them to the galleries to their respective films. Of course, there are a lot of things we've all been waiting to see , but that blog in English would add some much needed Hong Kong input to the site, especially the the "too local" content, and especially considering the blog is written by the guy who started the whole ball rolling in the first place.

[Bearserk]

Would have been great to read the blog in english.

[Gaijin84]

I'd like to read it in English as well - always interested in what is going on in Hong Kong

[AV1979]

I would have loved to have read it in English too...great to hear from you again ryan

[mrblue]

Hi Ryan! Nice to see you're still around.

I would like to see some of that content in English, as well.

[ryan]

Thanks for the note.

I think most readers would say yes for the English version. However, I'm afraid to say that the English version will only be provided when we found sufficient volunteer who wish to assist for translation, whom should be English native.

Currently we don't have such talent. The project would be strated only when we have enough manpower on that aspect.

Sorry to disappoint everyone but you may wish to appreciate that the blog is under-staffing, we only have one-third of the original manpower.

[Brian Thibodeau]

The call for assistance was indeed noted in your first post, but I wonder if a lot of members here are either not very well-versed in either English or Chinese, or are already very busy updating and/or fixing your database (I plan to be much more active at some point in the near future), even as we wait for modest site structure changes that seem like they'll never happen. I'm also not certain that any of us has enough mastery of both languages to handle the task, though I must obviously let everyone speak for themselves. It would be a bummer, though, if nothing could be done.

As someone who is a native English speaker, but cannot translate from Chinese to save my life, the most I might be able to do would be to apply a polish to the translation work of others, for example if English was not their first language but they knew enough to tease out a basic translation. Of course, I'm speculating here, as the whole thing might be too time consuming when the database itself is still in need of constant upgrading and there's such a small crew understaking the task.

P.S. I've been using a couple of online translators to read your blog for the past few days. It's not an ideal method, but I get the general idea--and a few unintended giggles thanks the technology!

[cal42]

I too would like to read that in English, but I don't have the necessary Chinese skills to do it (if only I'd kept up my lessons!).

Like Brian, I can tidy up English pretty well and I'm a pretty good proof-reader. If I can help...