Chinese Culture Project – The first project to promote Chinese poetry on Steemit is now online! 《樂筆詩塾》 – Steemit首個中國詩歌推廣計劃上線了！

Those who read my posts regularly will know I always post bilingual in Chinese and English, except when I get really really lazy and just post in English because it takes me forever to write Chinese due to my poor level of Chinese.

如有看我寫的東西，會知道我一般都是用中英雙語。 但我的中文實在太爛，有時會偷懶而只寫英文。

A while ago @kona asked me if I was interested to join his project to translate classical Chinese poems into English. My initial reaction was that it sounded a bit dull as classical literature has never been my thing, let alone Chinese which isn't my strongest. Then he said he was going to do it in a contemporary way. He would compose his own music and use the poem as the lyrics to make it into a song. He would get someone to do some sketches to go with the song. Someone else would explain the classical poems in plain Chinese, and finally another person would do the write up in Chinese. My role was to translate that to English. Now that sounded really interesting, and thus the Chinese Culture Project was born ~ @kona on music, @nanosesame on art, @perlia to translate the poems into plain Chinese, @aaronli would do the Chinese write up and I would be responsible for the English version.

之前@kona 問我有沒有興趣參加他的唐詩翻譯計劃。 我最初的感覺是有點沉悶，因為一直對中國文化及唐詩都沒有研究。 後來他說會以現代化的形式表達唐詩。他會自己作曲用唐詩詩句做歌詞，另外找人畫圖及講解唐詩， 最後整合成一篇文章。 我的工作範圍就是把文章翻成英文。 這聽上去又很有趣噢！ 於是『樂筆詩塾』就誕生了。成員包括@kona的音樂部分，@nanosesame的美術部分，@perlia負責講解唐詩，@aaronli負責中文文章，而我則負責英文部分。

Yesterday we officially launched our project @ccp-hk, check out our introductory post here.

昨天 @ccp-hk 發了我們第一篇自我介紹的文章。

Writing the introduction post was quite different from writing my own posts. @aaronli is very knowledgeable in literature and I know very little in this topic so spent quite a lot of time reading up on Chinese history and classical poem before starting the translation. But it was fun and I actually learnt something for a change!! Now I'm working on our first post for next week. The content from @aaronli is very rich making translation even more challenging. There's a bit of Chinese history, something which I hadn't touched since school, and I can tell you that's a long long time ago. I plan to KISS the English version - Keep It Simple, Steemit - without losing the essential points. This helps people new to the topic to grasp it better, otherwise it will be very dull and the last thing I want to do is to bore you guys to death!! Keeping it simple also makes it easier for me to do a better job because I don't want to end up biting off more than I can chew.

寫這篇自我介紹的英語部分跟平時寫自己的東西很不一樣。@aaronli 對文學認識很深，而我這方面的知識尤其是中國文化真的極之膚淺。 要做很多資料搜習才能開始翻譯這篇文章。發覺過程其實也挺有趣，還可以長知識。 第一項任務成功完成。 現正在翻下星期將會發的第一篇唐詩文章。@aaronli 這一篇的內容更加豐富，文章還包含一些中國歷史，對我的挑戰性和難度也更高，因我的中文只有中一程度，而讀過的古文就只有『木蘭辭』及『愛蓮說』。兩首都是較簡單的入門作品，跟『樂筆詩塾』的程度差很遠！ 我唯有將勤補拙，在有限的時間中，努力理解中文版的內容。 英文版我會儘量保持簡單易明，但當然會保持重點。 希望初接觸唐詩的朋友會較易明白，亦不會過份沉悶 。 我不想做到吃力不討好，所以保持英文版簡單，可讓我們的工作能更有效果。

Having said that, @perlia has done a great job to explain the poem which even I can relate to modern day and Steemit life ~ that's the aim of this project. The music that @kona has composed is really remarkable and brings the post to live. I have yet to see the artwork from @nanosesame, but based on her past work, I know for sure its going to be fun, contemporary and reflect the essence of the poem. Our first post is gradually coming together and so far its looking really good.

中文版內容豐富，@perlia詩歌解話可以套在現代甚至 Steemit 生活中，達成『樂筆詩塾』推廣詩歌的目的。@kona 作的曲又為文章帶來不少生氣。我暫時還未看到 @nanosesame 為文章預備的插圖，但看過她過往的做品，我想應該會既可愛又有動感，一定能表達詩歌的故事。第一篇唐詩文章已漸見雛形，希望發文時不會讓大家失望。

The Chinese Culture Project was just formed about 3 weeks ago, and although we know each other before, collaboration is a different ball game. We all have our own area of expertise have different ideas and ways of working, but are all dependant on one another. I'm looking forward to working with these guys, and hope that together, we can create some spark and deliver something unique on Steemit that people will enjoy reading.

『樂筆詩塾』剛組隊不足三個星期。雖然之前大家都認識，但一起合作還是首次。我們各有專長，工作習慣又不一樣，所以大家還在磨合階段。我期待跟新隊友一起合作，擦出火花，為 Steemit 帶點新意。