Science Networking Service Guokr Joins Translation Project of MOOC Platform Coursera

Guokr, a Chinese popular science social networking service website, signed cooperation agreement with Coursera, a leading massive open online course (MOOC) platform, to translate the English courses on the platform into Chinese (source in Chinese).

The richness and diversity of books and materials written by English, a universal language, cannot be paralleled by that of other languages. The courses on Coursera, a leading public course platform which cooperates with 87 partners and offers 444 courses as of this writing, are mostly streamed in English. Translation becomes a critical link for non-English native speakers to gain wider access to knowledge.

Against this backdrop, several leaners founded Guokr Education Subtitle Translation Group after Guokr rolled out MOOC College, a dedicated community for MOOC learners, in 2013. The social psychology course of Coursera firstly adopted the Chinese subtitle translated by the group in August. The group, which currently has 170 volunteers worldwide, will translate 7 Coursera courses in early stage of their cooperation.

In addition to serve as a communication platform of translators, Guokr will also launch a research project focused on Coursera Chinese users in a bid to gain a better understanding of their learning habits.

Community translation website Yeeyan also took part in Coursera’s English to Chinese translation project.