“The number of people who responded…was out of my expectation”

Excerpted from Elizabeth Tyson:

“The same spark that Al Gore inspired in many young people is now sweeping China – and much of the world – thanks to a new film and innovative effort to bring it overseas. Under the Dome, a TED-style documentary on China’s air pollution released in March, starring former TV reporter Chai Jang, has been likened by many to An Inconvenient Truth. It’s become a viral phenomenon, with 880,000 views on YouTube to date and more than 150 million views on the Chinese video platform Tencent before it was removed. Environmental Protection Minister Chen Jining even praised the film initially, before the government mandated the media stop covering it and blocked access online a week after its release.

Part of how quickly its spread, despite these efforts, has been a remarkable grassroots effort to crowdsource its translation into English. After seeing the documentary, high school students Tianyu Fang (age 14) and Linghein Ho (17), thought it was “conclusive and revolutionary,” Fang said in an email exchange. But without English subtitles, they felt it wasn’t going to reach many English papers and online media outlets.

On March 1, Fang and Ho, determined to translate the film, posted a request for translators and editors on Ho’s personal blog alongside an eight-minute YouTube clip with translations they had completed themselves. “The number of people who responded to us was out of my expectation,” Fang said. “We received hundreds of responses and heard from people who were willing to join us – from China, the United States, Australia, Japan, Germany, France, Spain, and Vietnam.”

The article gives other examples of such p2p efforts.

Watch the documentary with english subtitles here: