I have so far two unpublished translations of Chinese articles related to Bitcoin. One is left unpublished due to me not knowing exactly what to do with it. There is nothing new to me in it about Bitcoin per se, and although it is interesting to see a not terrible run down of Bitcoin that was both produced and consumed within China, there are no either intelligent or retarded arguments that I haven't already seen countless times in Western media. Not to mention the quality of the English version is low. I could go through and correct the grammar mistakes, but I don't know if this is the right thing to do given my current skill level in Chinese. That leaves me with something that is both a pain to read for my readers, and also uninformative.
The other is unpublished due to being, well, not what I wanted. There was some kerfluffle a while back about Xi Jinping endorsing "crypto" and I wanted to find out exactly what he said. It turns out that, unless you were physically there at the party meeting, or whatever they call it, there is no way to know. The only texts that Mia could find were not direct quotes, but summaries by no one I ever heard of of what he said.
After seeing these, I explained that I really wanted to know exactly what he said, and asked her if she could maybe find a video of the event. Now, she did find a video of the event, but there was no audio of Xi Jinping, just a voice over by, again, someone I've never heard of, "summarizing" what Xi Jinping "said."
This obfuscation has to be intentional. This technique of only providing summaries of what Xi Jinping said by other people who no one ever heard of allows Xi Jinping never to have to say anything stupid or wrong, because if it turns out that whoever summarized what he said said something wrong, that's on him, not Xi Jinping.
So, although I consider these two translations to be negative results, perhaps there is still some value to them. The first thing I have learned is perhaps a question to ask, rather than some new information: "How do you best work with a translator that knows Chinese better than English?" The second thing I have learned is (although I always suspected this to be true) not only that English language news about "crypto" coming out of China is total trash, but specifically why, which is that until I see some counter evidence I must assume that all news articles are based on summaries in Chinese by no names, and that it cannot be assumed that these summaries are sourced from original content by anyone with any sort of reputation.
I am left, at this point, with no great desire to continue digging through the dung heap remotely. As for what's next, I am considering having Mia try to attend a Bitcoin meetup near where she's located and write up a report, or going to China myself and attending one.