(Clearwisdom.net)
1. A Brief Introduction to this German Dafa Website Team
At the very beginning, when this German-language Dafa website was established, very few practitioners volunteered their time in its operation. Although we anticipated more help from our practitioners, due to security considerations, we did not ask widely whether practitioners would like to volunteer support for this project. Since then, many new Dafa projects have come into being. Because of this, some existing team members went to those new projects. Under such circumstances, what was the best way to increase the quantity and quality of the articles on this German Dafa website? We tried to discuss the issue with the practitioners who were leaving and convince them to stay. However, we noticed that every practitioner had a different understanding. After a group sharing session, we decided to send an email to all practitioners, telling them about the importance of the website and the status of the German website team,. We hoped that some practitioners would come to help us when conditions permitted them to do so. By sending the email, we hoped that other Dafa teams would also understand and support us. This approach proved effective. After we sent the email, some practitioners came to help us. They told us that they did not know that the website team was short-staffed. ,Our team leader kept in touch with the new translators and proofreaders, and ,we endeavored to promote exchanges among our team members from the perspective of the Fa, to address any specific questions.
Website work requires continuity and stability. Although we have ordinary jobs to perform, families to care for and other Dafa activities to attend to every day, the website work cannot be affected or delayed. We have endeavored to ensure that our work be completed on our way to a Fahui or during other travel, because we know many practitioners and readers are waiting to read those articles the next day. Sometimes we encountered interference, but we maintained our righteous thoughts and kept our communication channels open. Thus, we were able to overcome those obstacles.
We have regular briefings among different groups to keep abreast of current issues of most importance. As for the website work, our aim is to keep up with the reports from Chinese and English Dafa websites. In this final stage of Fa rectification, we pay more attention to translating noteworthy experience sharing articles, so that the practitioners in the German-speaking regions can realize their shortcomings in a timely manner and take action to make necessary corrections.
In order for the website working groups to form one body and advance as a whole, we study the Fa and exchange our ideas together every week at a fixed time. Although the number of participants is not that many yet due to various reasons, including some practitioners being busy with other projects, we would like to continue with it, because this is a stable platform for all the groups to share and exchange their experiences or ideas. In the meantime, we encourage more practitioners to participate in this group Fa study and exchange opportunity. In addition, we have created an email list, which has enabled us to exchange directly among our members, ask or answer questions, and provide mutual support among our working groups.
Several months ago, a new Dafa project group sent an email to all practitioners in the German-speaking region, requesting practitioners' participation in that project. After that, some of our website team members and translation coordinators went to join that project group, causing the number of articles posted on our German website to decrease. In a group sharing, some team members were angry at the behavior of the other project team. Afterwards, we realized that ,we should not have a competitive mentality, as do ordinary people. Instead, we should consider all teams as a whole body and support and help one another. The support and help should not be limited to team members, but should also be among different groups or teams. Later, we also sent an email to all German practitioners, introducing to them the current situation of our website team, and asking if there were any practitioners who were interested in participating in the project. When our thoughts are righteous, Teacher will come to help us. In the end, our team has grown, as practitioners have come to support us.
2. The Chinese-to-German Translation Group
Around one year ago, many practitioners working on the Chinese website translation team left for The Epoch Times in German. In my heart I had some complaints to those practitioners since the expertise of a translator cannot be achieved through a one-day training session. After sharing with other practitioners, I enlightened that every practitioner who participates in Dafa work fundamentally belongs to all teams. Under the situation that we were short of translators, we again looked for practitioners who would like to participate in the translation work. It did not matter much if they were not experienced translators, but only experienced translators can work for The Epoch Times in German. Their project had just begun and needed more people to help. In addition, our knowledge and our capabilities are all given, in fact, by Dafa and do not belong to any individual or any single team. Dafa disciples devote a lot of energy to various methods meant to clarify the truth and save sentient beings. We should feel glad that we have this new project that will serve to more extensively expose the evil. Whether practitioners work for our website is totally up to how they understand the work and their own time constraints. Only by going with the flow, without any pursuit, are we in accord with the requirements of Dafa.
We have used a series of training methods to help acquaint practitioners with translation work as quickly as possible. For example, we sent our translators a ready-reference list of frequently occurring terms on the website, and described their proper usage'. We wrote emails encouraging practitioners to not hesitate to ask coordinators when they have questions. Some articles include typical special words used only in Mainland China. Therefore, we reviewed such articles with Taiwan practitioners to familiarize them with those terms so that their questions could be quickly answered. In addition, we advised practitioners to often read our website in German and become familiar with different kinds of grammar and German idioms. This also enabled them to track the articles that they translated. Sometimes a translated article is not published for a long time or the polishing will introduce some mistakes into a translated article. Such mistakes can be reduced if timely feedback is relayed"". Further, practitioners on the technical team can examine which step caused the problem,, and what were the contributing factors. Sometimes the information is lost half way through the process and other times it is simply left out. In the first several months, practitioners on the polishing team gave us tremendous help. They sent back polished articles in time and some of them directly communicated with the translators.
Some articles need to be translated from English to German. That is to say, the reason that a translated article in German is sometimes confusing is because it was not translated accurately when it was originally translated from Chinese to English. In such cases, we have to find the original article in Chinese to check the content. The mistakes made during the translation from Chinese to English are usually caused by the fact that the translator did not choose the precise word or the translator did not know some special situation in China and translated literally.
Deciding what articles on each day's Chinese website should be translated into German is an important issue. 'How to reflect the Fa rectification process, how to use articles on Chinese Dafa websites to help practitioners in German-speaking countries, what problems exist among practitioners, and how to use the website to help practitioners discern the 'old force's arrangements and walk well and steadily on the road of Fa rectification cultivation must all be taken into account in selecting articles. I realize that under any circumstance, we should study the Fa well, solemnly do the '"three things'" with a pure heart, and not be affected by our individual cultivation status. Master has given us guidance for problems occurring among practitioners in different periods. Through studying Master's articles, we can all realize the phase that Fa rectification has come to, what methods of clarifying the truth can be used more extensively, and what are the general problems existing among practitioners. Translators often participate in other activities for clarifying the truth. Through experience sharing with practitioners in other activities, information about some incorrect status, loopholes that practitioners have not gotten rid of that are enlarged and exploited, and some pretty good experiences,, can all be timely passed to us.
What is interesting is that when we saw some problems and wanted to warn practitioners to constantly improve from the Fa, a corresponding article would be published on a Chinese Dafa website in the next day or so. For example, when German practitioners working for The Epoch Times were anxious about getting advertisements, immediately one of the Chinese Dafa websites published a concise, clear-minded experience sharing article written by a practitioner who worked for the Chinese Epoch Times. When several coordinators for important projects were not able to conduct themselves well due to the attachment of affection and did not treat it as a principal issue, a Chinese Dafa website published related articles on several continuous days. Of course, we hastened to translate them accurately and have them published. Thus, practitioners in German-speaking areas could read in depth, Fa-based, experience sharing articles within several days of their publication on the Chinese websites. This, enables them to envisage their problems from another height and angle during their tests so that losses can be reduced. We also ask western practitioner's about their needs and opinions regarding the website. We send to the big group the links of good articles that are well targeted and highly recommended. From time to time, we also receive thank you emails from practitioners. Seeing Dafa's website generate these positive effects, we are all happy. But we all know that it ought to function this way. It is not because we are very capable, it is the power of Dafa naturally manifesting itself through our work.
The work for the website requires high xinxing from practitioners. If our xinxing does not match the holiness and significance of this work, the negative result will affect these countries. If we are always in the Fa and always consider ourselves practitioners, we can truly play our roles of helping practitioners. It is just like this that practitioners and the website affect each other and manifest Dafa's dignity and power.
In the end, I'd like to thank fellow practitioners on the Chinese and English Dafa websites for the effort that they make. Let's work more diligently to complete this holy mission.