Coming to terms with Death and other big issues on the Internet

Chen Xiaoran is finally beginning to understand the complexities of Death.

Not his own, but the philosophy course in Yale University's open program.

Chen, a Chinese college student, at first was baffled by the jeans and sneakers-clad professor who sat cross-legged on his desk for the lectures, which are posted on-line.

"I liked the relaxed style of the class," says Chen. "We don't see much of that on our campus."

It's a rare opportunity for China's Internet users to see how a Yale professor inspires his students to think, to question, and to argue.

But without subtitles, understanding would be difficult, if not possible.

"I'd been longing to listen to Death for a long time and I tried for two classes, but couldn't understand due to my poor English comprehension," says Chen. "But now with Chinese subtitles, it's much easier."

The subtitles of Yale's on-line open courses are translated into Chinese by non-profit translation workshop YYets, which is opening up courses of Ivy-league universities to ordinary Chinese.

YYets was founded six years ago by a group of amateur translators, who started out translating foreign movies and TV series, but unlike other voluntary translation workshops in China, they moved into academia.

Liang Liang, the founder of YYets, is a self-employed technician. He says he started the undertaking simply out of love of translation and the desire to introduce English-language films and TV shows to more Chinese.

His team of volunteers -- mostly college and graduate students -- all work with the same altruistic intentions, and the YYets website generates enough advertising revenue to cover the overheads.

The academic translations began a month ago, the idea of a friend, and proved to be more difficult than anticipated.

"Subtitling college courses requires us to understand the specific academic field or we'll humiliate ourselves with the translation," he says.

"We select courses according to our translators' capacities and user demand. Once we decide to take on a new academic field, we recruit new translators accordingly," says Liang.

"We have to comply with historical facts and terminology. Some of the courses even require translators to know ancient Greek and Roman poems."

The translation of each course is a team effort. Four people each take 15 minutes of an hour-long class, but even then it can take each team member three days to complete.

The leader of the "Death" team, who goes by the nom-de-plume of "Flying Phantom," says, "The most interesting part is discussion and rewording after the first drafts. We ask experts about what we're unsure of."

One tricky term was the concept of "physicalism." "We debated the Chinese translation of the term and then sent an e-mail to the lecturer of "Death" at Yale University for enlightenment," says Flying Phantom.

"As he did not reply, we finally picked the version that most of our philosophy major translators agreed on."
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