A Bit More on the Chinese News about Galaxy Zoo
I’m back in the UK, so I thought it would be nice to give an update on the Chinese coverage of Galaxy Zoo resulting from the big talk I gave in Beijing at the 28th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union. As you know, I was invited to give one of four “Invited Discourses” at that meeting, on the topic of “A Zoo of Galaxies”. The powerpoint slides of my talk are available online. I still don’t know where/if the video of the talk has appeared online, so will update more on that soon.
As I mentioned before, an abstract of my talk (and a picture of me and one of my favourite galaxies) appeared on the front page of the first edition of “Inquiries of Heaven” (the IAU Daily Newspaper for the meeting).
The talk also attracted a small amount of interest from Chinese press.
Kevin already posted the information that Xinhua (sort of the Chinese version of Reuters) covered it here: Astronomy Project Hunts for Chinese Helpers, (or the Chinese version); since this a news feed it got picked up by a variety of Chinese newspapers.
I was also interviewed for “Amateur Astronomer” (a Chinese astronomy magazine). Here’s the first page of the article they sent me.
8 responses to “A Bit More on the Chinese News about Galaxy Zoo”
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- - March 28, 2013
Galaxy Zoo 
Wow! That is fantastic Karen!!
Do you have the Chinese characters for “Xin Xi Zong Dong Yuan”? Both Amateur Astronomer and Southern Weekly wrote “星系动物园”, which is xingxi dongwuyuan (and Southern Weekly even gave “Galaxy Zoo” as the English of this). With some googling, I found that 星 means ‘star’, and 系 ‘system’ (so a galaxy is a ‘star system’!), and that 动物 means ‘animal’, and 园 ‘park’, or ‘garden’ (so a zoo is an ‘animal park’)
Xingxi Zong Dong Yuan (missing g in the blog post – sorry), is written on the title slide of the ppt I linked to in the first paragraph. Zong Dong Yuan means something like “join in and play/search”. “Finding Nemo” in Chinese was “Nemo Zong Dong Yuan”, so a Chinese collaborator at Portsmouth recommended this translation, instead of the literal “zoo” (as an animal park) translation – since in Chinese “zoo” doesn’t have the same multiple meanings we have in English. Interesting that both Amateur Astronomer and Southern Weekly chose a different translation.
Thanks!
海底总动员 is, I think, ‘Finding Nemo’ (in simplified Chinese; it’s amazing what you can find with Google!) The first two characters mean ‘seabed’, the middle ‘general’, and the last two ‘mobilization’ (at least, that’s what Google Translate says). So, “星系总动员” is ‘Finding Galaxies’ …. When I entered those five characters into Google, I got a whole lot of hits!! The top one is dated 21 August, from Xinhua, and quotes you (Google translates “星系总动员” as “The Galaxy Story”). The second also seems to have come from you … but the site is “UFO China” 😦 The third one talks about why you use “星系总动员” and not “星系动物园” (among other things). And so it goes. There seems to have been an awful lot of coverage of Galaxy Zoo in the Chinese (language) press! 🙂
Hi, I asked a question after your talk, and you mentioned that the existence of a Chinese version of galaxy zoo will be quite helpful for the promotion of this project in China. I wrote an email immediately after the talk to the galaxy zoo group to volunteer a translation to a Chinese version, but until now, there is no mannual response. I’m afraid I have to put my question here, so how can I help to translate the website?
Hi, I asked a question after your talk in Beijing. I remember you mentioned that there is no Chinese version of the Galaxy Zoo, and (I can’t agree more) it’s the major hinder for Chinese amateurs to help. Actually, some response of the news says that they would definately go to help if there is a Chinese version, and they are waiting for that. I wrote an email immediately after the talk to the galaxy zoo group for volunteering of the translation into Chinese, but until now there is no mannual response. So I have to put my question here, how can I help to translate this webpage into Chinese?
Hi Yimingleon – sorry for the non response. The Galaxy Zoo team email is often overwhelmed. Can you email me directly (karen.masters@port.ac.uk) and we’ll talk about what is required for a Chinese translation.
I’ve already sent you an email. In case you can’t pinpoint that, my email address is yimingleon@gmail.com