Tuesday, October 25, 2011

ACIM in Chinese

Congratulations and Well Done to Judith Skutch Whitson and her team, they are coming out now with a Chinese edition of A Course In Miracles. [update, see below] I don't think it needs to be said how important an event this is, politically, religiously, philosophically, spiritually, and just in terms of sheer numbers!
Chinese is a profoundly alien language to English, in form and in thought, and it must have been a colossal challenge and job to do this right. (Not that it's ever easy, they say that they target any translation of ACIM to take five years.)

They are also doing amazing work in the digital sphere, they now have The Course out in ebook format on many platforms, Kindle, Nook, Sony, Mobi, iPhone/iPad (via Kindle and BN, not iBooks), Android, and soon Google. I am into those things (ereaderJoy.com), and I can tell you it is not a trivial thing to develop an ebook, even though by rights it should be these days. Just for one thing there are apparently no tools which does a really good job of translating a regular wordprocessor file into any of the ebook formats, it has to at least be carefully edited and corrected manually.
I have the Course in Kindle format (reading mostly on iPad), and it's beautifully done.


Update:
I contacted Judith Whitson to see if I had it all correct. It turns out there are two different Chinese versions of the Course, one in the "Traditional Font" and one in the "Simplified Font".
Judith told me:
The first edition of the Chinese translation of A Course in Miracles was first published by the Foundation for Inner Peace in 1997.  It was printed in the the Traditional Font and disseminated in all countries where Chinese was spoken except for the Peoples' Republic of China, where the Simplified Font is used. You are correct in assuming that there was also the timing factor in that a decade ago there was indeed resistance to the themes introduced by the Course on Mainland China.
 The first edition was widely distributed through the efforts of a remarkable translator, Chiao lin Cabanne who then spent years in public presentations, teaching and traveling throughout Asia. Because of her efforts, the Course is now studied through dozens of groups in Taiwain, Malaysia and Hong Kong.  Groups also started to spring up on the Mainland.  Finally, this past year, Course was set into Simplified Font, approved by a publisher in Beijing and was printed last week for distribution in the Peoples' Republic of China. 
So you see, Eolake, it has been a double phased effort. 
It warms my heart that you understand the great commitment of love, time, resources and effort that are given these translations. 
As best as we can estimate, this means that approximately 93% of the world's population is able to read the Course in languages of their choice.
Also, by the way, the Translation Program of the Foundation for Inner Peace is an equal effort of Dr. Kenneth Wapnick, who teaches the translators and Dr. William Whitson who manages the process.  :>)
I hope this is helpful to you, and again, I am so appreciative that you let me clarify the process.
And you made me smile by recognizing in your excellent blog the size of the Course's electronic outreach through the ebooks we design and make available just as fast as we can!  We are coming out with two more this year and I'll let you know when they are being launched.
"Love is the way I walk in gratitude".
Judy 

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