Plugging the knowledge gap

Ask any Chinese university student today what his or her favorite course is, and the answer will probably surprise you:

"Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?" offered by Harvard University's Professor Michael Sandel, or "Death" by Yale's Professor Shelly Kagan.

These are just two open courses being offered by leading universities that are proving to be a hit among Chinese students, thanks to the Internet and an increasingly inter-connected world.

A group of Chinese volunteers, most of whom are university students themselves, are helping to fuel the trend by removing the language barrier for non-English speakers within the country - they subtitle these English lectures and courses in Chinese and make them available for online viewing or downloading.

As a result, Chinese viewers who are not proficient enough in English are now able to benefit from these overseas educational programs.

"I'm really impressed by the course content of 'Death' at Yale," said Wu Hong, 41, who works at a Shanghai-based furniture trade company.

"However, I could only understand through the subtitles."

"I really appreciate what these translators do," Wu said.

While such open courses have been offered to the public for some time, they had not gained much attention in China because of the language barrier. Only a few Chinese netizens who had advanced English skills were able to fully understand the content.

However, the recent work by volunteers at YYeTs.net, a website that provides free subtitles of foreign language movies and dramas, has helped Chinese netizens who are desperate for high-level e-education to learn more.

YYeTs.net has rolled out a series of high-quality subtitled courses from philosophy to medical science, including "Death" and "Frontiers of Biomedical Engineering" from Yale.

These subtitled open courses were an immediate hit with Chinese netizens after their release, with most audiences made up of university students and white-collar workers, said Liang liang, manager of YYeTs.net.

All members in the subtitling team are volunteers, said Zhang Yinan, coordinator of the free-course subtitling group. University students account for two-thirds of the members.

"We have strict rules for the quality of translation we provide," Zhang said.

"All the newcomers must pass two exams in order to get assigned."

Each lecture will be split into several short parts and distributed to more than 10 translators. Each one translates up to 200 sentences, depending on the time available and individual ability.

YYeTs.net also provides free training to ensure all newcomers get used to the entire procedure as soon as possible.

More than 200 members are currently working in the free-course group.

"I like the subtitled courses because they help me to verify my listening and understanding,

as I'm not that sure about my English proficiency," said Zhang Xiaotian, an engineer from an electronic company in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.

He has viewed three Yale open courses, including "Introduction to Psychology", "Listening to Music" and "Game Theory".

"I also find that many of those courses are missing in Chinese universities. They are so interesting I just cannot stop learning from them."