Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber 

On November 30, 2009,  the server for the translation website, Yeeyan.com, was down. On December 3 it was confirmed that Yeeyan.com had been shut down. Yeeyan has been around for two and a half years and is well-known for its translation of content from the English press. 5.000 translators have been contributing translations, the site has roughly 90.000 regular users.

The Open Letter of Yeeyan

致译言用户的公开信

各位亲爱的译言er:
在过去的三天里，译言网（yeeyan.com）无法登录，给大家造成诸多不便。外界也出现了关于译言网的各种猜测。
在此译言网作出说明：
由于我们对网站上的部分文章把关出现偏差，违反了国家相关管理规定；因此译言网需要暂时关闭服务器，并对相关内容进行调整。
我们对于没有事先通知大家就临时关闭网站、给大家带来不便，亦感十分抱歉。
请大家放心，我们保留了所有的用户数据。我们会尽快解决遇到的问题，并且将大家珍视的译文和个人信息恢复访问。
附：译言的简介
价值：
“发现、翻译、阅读中文以外的互联网精华”
理念：
“上世纪初，梁启超曾将翻译作为救国之道；信息时代的今天，中外文内容数量依然悬殊。让我们一起为中文互联网创造更多有价值的内容！”
历程：
2006 年11月三名曾在美国硅谷工作的中国工程师创办的译言网正式上线。译言网是一个开放的社区翻译平台，我们的目标是把译言建设成一个有影响力的严肃内容提供 方和译者活动社区。2007年4月份在中国北京注册译言公司，并且获得了ICP许可证、电子公告牌运营许可、中关村高新技术企业证书。译言网协同翻译平台 也获得了多项国家专项基金支持。3年中和众多译者、用户一起，我们翻译了大量国外的互联网、创业、科技、生活信息，并且通过译爱、地震救灾手册等体现了译 言用户的高素质和无私奉献的精神。正因为无数贡献者、参与者、高端译者的支持，译言获得了众多读者、媒体的关注和认可。
在此真诚感谢大家在过去三年中对译言的支持和鼓励。我们期待在不久的将来能够以崭新的面貌与各位重逢。
非常欢迎大家继续与我们保持联系，我们的邮箱是contact@yeeyan.com。
译言网
2009年12月3日

The relevant part says:

“Due to our errors in handling some of the articles on the website, we went against the relevant regulations; therefore Yeeyan has to temporarily shut off its server, and adjust the relevant content.
As for closing the website without giving notice, and for causing inconvenience, we are deeply sorry.
Please don’t worry too much, we have saved all users’ data. We will solve the problem we face as quickly as possible, and recover the articles and personal information treasured by everyone.”

Some people believe that the following articles from the Guardian triggered the censorship (Google cache pages are still available):

进京上访被关“黑监狱” (Thrown into the Black Jail While Appealing Petition)
www.yeeyan.com/articles/view/keanohan/68206/dz

有报道指：上访者被关“黑监狱” | 卫报- 译言出品 (Petitioners Have Been Thrown into the Black Jail)
guardian.yeeyan.com/guardian/68206

Here you find some background material related to Yeeyan, but also to the general crackdown on the Internet by the Chinese authorities during the last few weeks:

1. The Guardian introduces its connection with YeeYan.com on this page:
http://www.danwei.org/net_nanny_follies/yeeyancom_stops_publishing_and.php

In an experimental project, the Guardian is collaborating with Yeeyan, a ground-breaking community translation website, to offer Chinese language versions of a selection of articles daily.
Yeeyan is a network of volunteers who translate material which they think would be of interest to a Chinese audience. The selection of Guardian articles for translation is made by Yeeyan members. You can see all Guardian articles available in Chinese here. Where you see this link – “阅读中文 | Read this in Chinese” – on Guardian stories in English, you can follow the link to a Chinese version. For all Guardian coverage of China, plus reports from Danwei, a Beijing-based website on media and urban life, go to guardian.co.uk/china.

本栏目是卫报与译言――一个具有开创意义的社区翻译网站联手推出的试验田。每天，我们将为中文读者带来一系列卫报文章的中译。
卫报是一份观点独立的著名英国报纸。1820年创刊于曼彻斯特，卫报总部现在位于伦敦。

译言是一个双语志愿者的社区。译者们选择他们认为有益于中国的外语内容进行翻译。卫报中文栏目的内容选择由译言社区成员完成，并汇集在这里供您阅 读。另外，如果您在阅读卫报英语文章时看到这个标志（“阅读中文 | Read this in Chinese”），可以点击阅读这篇文章的中文版。而如果您有兴趣阅读更多关于中国的报道，以及来自“单位（一个在北京写作、关注中国城市生活与媒体现 状的博客）“的内容，请进入卫报中国。

2. The Guardian
China closes Yeeyan website that translated Guardian stories
Mostly volunteer online community gave Chinese users access to content from outside country
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/03/yeeyan-china-guardian-media-mandarin

A collaborative experiment with the community translation website Yeeyan to publish a selection of Guardian stories in Mandarin has been closed down by the Chinese authorities.
Yeeyan’s main website, which also publishes other material translated by its members, has also been shut down. No reason has been given. The Guardian is seeking an explanation from the Chinese government about why the site was shut, and when it will be allowed to resume publication.
Alan Rusbridger, editor in chief of Guardian News & Media, said: “This is a very disconcerting development. Yeeyan is a wonderful community of mostly volunteer translators who give Chinese web users access to a wide range of content published outside China, including Guardian reporting and commentary.
“We hope this move does not represent an attempt to suppress independent-minded journalism, and that the Chinese authorities can reassure us that Yeeyan and the Guardian will be allowed to resume publication.”
Yeeyan is the largest open translation community in China. As of June this year, it had more than 90,000 registered users, including about 5,000 community translators who have published nearly 30,000 translations on the site.
China has more than 300 million internet users and employs some of the world’s tightest controls over what they see. The Chinese government’s official line is that there is no censorship in China. But it has huge numbers of internet monitors who watch over the web, blacklisting websites and filtering out sensitive content. The country is often criticised for having the so-called Great Firewall of China, a censorship programme that strips the internet of political dissent.
After a temporary easing up during the 2008 Olympics, Chinese censors have blocked access to several popular online services this year. Facebook, Twitter, Hotmail and the photo sharing service Flickr were shut down in July, two days before the 20th anniversary of the crackdown on democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. It is believed China’s decision to block social networking sites followed the use of them by Iranian demonstrators to publicise the crackdown after that country’s contested presidential election in June.
Media commentators believe the crackdown this year is linked to a number of “sensitive” anniversaries, including the 4 May student uprisings of 1919, the 1959 Tibetan uprising, Tiananmen Square, and the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
US president Barack Obama criticised China’s firewall in a speech during his first official visit to the country last month.

“I’m a big supporter of non-censorship,” Obama said. “I recognise that different countries have different traditions. I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free internet – or unrestricted internet access – is a source of strength and I think should be encouraged.”

3 . Donews: 翻译网站译言网证实被主管部门封站
http://tech.mop.com/yc/2009/1203/0000287610.shtml

An article on Donews, an IT related website, cites Zhao Jiamin, one of the founders of Yeeyan:
„Perhaps it’s related to the recent cleansing of mobile phones and the internet, but I didn’t think that it would be taken down so quickly.” As to when the website would be restored, he said, “This won’t be solved in one or two days.”

Donews 12月3日消息（记者 周然）12月3日，国内知名翻译网站译言网（http://www.yeeyan.com/）创始人赵嘉敏在接受Donews采访时透露，网站不能访问的实际原因是被有关部门封站。
有网友表示，译言网已经连续3天不能访问。而译言网在网站公告称，是遇到技术问题导致站点不能访问。赵嘉敏透露，此前就已被封站数日，“可能和近期的手机和互联网治理有关，但没想到封的这么快”。对于何时能够恢复，他表示“这不是一天两天能办到的”。（完）

4. Rebecca McKinnon: China tightens Internet controls in the name of fighting porn, piracy, and cybercrime
http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2009/12/china-tightens-internet-controls-all-in-the-name-of-fighting-porn-piracy-and-cybercrime.html

As the year draws to a close, China’s blocking of overseas websites – including Facebook, Twitter, and thousands of other websites including this blog – is more extensive and technically more sophisticated than ever. Controls over domestic content have also been tightening. People who work for Chinese Internet companies continue to complain that they remain under heavy pressure to be more thorough about the way in which they police and censor blogging platforms, social networking sites, discussion forums, and any form of user-generated content. As feared, the censorship arms race, which began in the run-up to theanniversary of the June 4th crackdown, intensified after the Xinjiang riots, and ramped up further in the run-up to the October 1st 60th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China passed uneventfully.
The past few weeks have seen four new moves which are not officially or overtly aimed at political content, but which have implications for the way in which the government controls all conveyors of all kinds of speech. First, late November saw the launch of a mobile porn crackdown. The draconian way in which this crackdown is being implemented, however, involves a great deal of collateral damage for non-pornographic content. For example, the crackdown has caused China Mobile and other wireless carriers to suspend all billing of all WAP and G+ mobile services, including those by legitimate companies in good standing who are not involved with porn. As this article in Chinese on DoNews points out, the mobile content market in China is growing fast and getting quite lucrative.
Second, Chinese the state-run media is going after the search engines again for – horror of horrors, turning up smutty results when users search for smutty information. In early December, China Central Television (CCTV) ran a report which accused Google, Baidu, and Sohu of irresponsibility. According to the research firm JLM Pacific Epoch:
“The report said Google ”persisted in its old ways” and “explored every avenue to avoid China’s ‘anti-low-brow’ campaign” after previous reports on the subject by the state broadcaster but noted that Google’s English version contains content far more obscene than its Chinese language site. None of the three parties has made any official response, the report said.”
I would not want to be running Google China these days. No fun.
Third, last week the government shut down more than 500 file-sharing websites as part of an anti-porn and anti-piracy crackdown, on the grounds that these websites don’t have proper licenses. For a sampling of Chinese netizen reaction, see Global Voices Online and People’s Daily Online.   ReadWriteWeb points out that given China’s strict government controls on what movies can legally be shown, these sites are the only way for many Chinese to access a lot of content. Much political jockeying by the more established services is now underway, and Xinhua indicatesthat the largest file-sharing site, VeryCD is fighting for survival.
Fourth, CNNIC, the organization which runs the .cn top-level domain has announced that it is no longer accepting domain name applications from individuals. The stated reason in news reports is to control abuse of the .cn domain name space by criminals. Under the new rules, if you want to buy any domain name ending in .cn you have to provide ID and proof of company or organizational registration. As the Internet Governance Project’s Milton Mueller puts it, “China’s government is using its control of domain names to impose more strict controls over the Internet.” Chinese Internet users have an interesting take on this latest development. Some like William Long say that this is actually a good thing, because anybody who isn’t in lockstep with the Chinese government is better off staying away from .cn to begin with. Since January he has been urging Chinese Internet users not to use .cn domains, even posting instructions for how to buy domains on GoDaddy, arguing that .cn domains are too risky because the government could take the domain away from you at any time on vague grounds that you are violating some Chinese law, regulation, or whatever.
It’s also worth noting that CNNIC is now applying to ICANN to run .中国 - and plans to apply for .网络 and .公司 whenever ICANN opens up the application process for generic top-level domains. As the Internet’s domain name system becomes multilingual, will the Chinese language domain space be hospitable to anybody who is not in total synch with the PRC government? The answer is pretty clear by now: only if non-PRC entities can run Chinese-language top-level domains outside of China. Will ICANN ensure that this will indeed be possible? We don’t know yet. ICANN is still formulating the application process for new generic top-level domains, which includes the details of a process by which governments can object to – and potentially block – applications.

5. Xinhua.net: Computers monitored in Chinese Internet cafes for crackdown on illegal online games
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-12/25/content_12705129.htm

China has put more than 4.65 million computers in over 81,000 Internet cafes across the country under watch to crack down on illegal online games, according to Minister of Culture Cai Wu.
In an interview with Xinhua, Cai said the ministry has closed 219 illegal Internet games with lewd, pornographic and violent contents, and has blocked the access to illegal games and relevant websites for more than 87 million times since the beginning of this year.
China launched a series of nationwide campaigns to crack down on the spread of lewd and pornographic contents through the Internet and mobile phones in 2009.
In the latest development, the Ministry of Public Security said on Thursday that the ministry has closed down more than 2,300 WAP websites accessible by mobile phones, and arrested 34 people for running those websites.
Cai said the culture ministry would set up laws and regulations on Internet games in order to strengthen administration in the sector, and would improve censorship of the games in the future.

6. CNN: China cracks down on personal Web sites
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/12/15/china.internet.crackdown.ft/index.html

China has banned individuals from registering internet domain names and launched a review of millions of existing personal websites in the toughest government censorship drive so far on the internet.
As of Monday, people applying to register a domain name in China must present a company chop and a business licence, the China Internet Network Information Center, a government-backed body, said in a statement.
Internet service providers said they had started to review their client base for potentially fraudulent or “harmful” individually owned sites. The term “harmful” is often used by the government as a catch-all that covers everything from pornography to anti-state activity.
As with many other issues considered sensitive by the government, individual domain name ownership has always been a legal grey area in China.
The government considered twice over the past 10 years whether to explicitly allow personal websites but with no result. So far, however, individuals could simply sign up for domain name ownership on the web. This has now been replaced by the stricter application process outlined in the CNNIC notice.
Individuals are estimated to account for the majority of all registered domain names globally. But China does not disclose domain name statistics by ownership category. According to CNNIC, China had 16.3m domain names as of June this year, 80 per cent of which have the ending “.cn”. The rest use “.org”, “.net” or “.com”.
The move follows a string of other measures to crack down on internet and media content as the government is showing signs of increasing unease, especially over user-generated internet content, which it struggles to control.
Beijing controls the internet through a sophisticated multi-layered system, which includes surveillance on all levels of government but also relies heavily on portals and other sites hosting content to censor on its behalf. This system has been increasingly strained by the fast rise of social media dominated by user-generated content.
Last week, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television closed down a number of video sharing websites, citing copyright violations and lewd content. In the same week, the government said more than 3,000 people had been arrested nationwide for alleged involvement in posting pornographic content on the internet.
Earlier this year, the authorities blocked a number of social media sites, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter and some of their local clones.
This comes against the background of a broader tightening in the political climate as the country has seen a rise in social unrest, some of which was allegedly organised or promoted through the internet, peaking in ethnic riots in July in Xinjiang that killed almost 200 people, according to the government.
Hu Shuli, the founder and editor of Caijing, China’s most freewheeling news magazine, quit last month following a spat with the magazine’s publisher over commercial strategy and censorship. Last week, the editor of Southern Weekend, another independent publication, was demoted after censors expressed dissatisfaction with a story speculating about personnel changes in the Communist party.

7. RFA Unplugged: China Internet Crackdown Could Fuel DVD Piracy
http://rfaunplugged.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/china-internet-crackdown-could-fuel-dvd-piracy/

Speculation that China is about to shut down all audio and video Web sharing sites has Internet users there scrambling to download as much and as can as quickly as they can.
Chinese journalist George Sun says many fear if the authorities proceed with such a ban then netizens say it will not stop information sharing but just lead to the resurgence of a new old method, namely pirate DVD’s and CD’s.
The largest BitTorrent Web sites in China like BTCHINA, VeryCD and the Garden of Eden have been closed down or ordered to delete all links to downloaded films or TV series in the past week.
The State Administration of Radio Film and Television said BTCHINA did not have a license to distribute audio and video content. “SARFT has deleted our site’s registration and shut down our site,” a notice on the BTCHINA site said.
UUbird.com, a similar Web site, said in a notice it would delete all links for downloading TV series and films “to firmly support and comply with the state’s laws and regulations.”
The authorities often cite the sharing of pornography or illicit material for internet crackdowns and censorship but many commentators believe it is a cover for keeping a lid on dissent.

8. SINA English: China makes progress in Internet piracy crackdown
http://english.sina.com/technology/2009/1218/294157.html

BEIJING, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) — China has made notable progress in its crackdown on Internet piracy and copyright infringement following months-long campaigns.
A total of 541 Internet copyright infringement cases have been investigated and 362 illegal websites have ben closed, since the nationwide special campaign was jointly launched in August by the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC), the Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the NCAC said in a statement.
Police have confiscated 154 web servers and ordered websites to delete infringing contents for over 500 times. Fines on websites involved in Internet piracy have topped 1.28 million yuan (187,000US dollars) during the campaign.
NCAC publicized ten Internet piracy cases on Friday, ranging from pirated literature works to unauthorized music, movies, TV series and illicit games.
Online sellers of the pirated book “Zhu Rongji’s answers to journalists’ questions”, which files the former premier’s answers to media interviews and speeches delivered overseas, have been fined or received warnings. Other cases were either transferred to public security departments for further investigation or to people’s courts for public prosecution, NCAC said.
Wang Ziqiang, an official from NCAC, said at an Internet copyright protection forum held here on Friday that literature works, films, TVs and games were key targets of the country’s crackdown on Internet piracy this year.
“The rapid development and wide application of Internet technology is changing the way of information spreading, and also leading to more diversified piracy and copyright infringement activities,” Wang said.
The Chinese government has kept a close eye on the protection of intellectual property rights on the Internet, supervising a total of 3,029 major websites in China including Baidu and Sina.
On Aug. 20, the website controller of “Tomato Garden”, which provided downloads of pirated softwares including Windows XP, was sentenced to 3 years and a half in jail and fined up to 1 million yuan (146,000 US dollars). It was the country’s first criminal case of Internet piracy.