Ancestry.com’s Jiapu.cn

[Henry]

In a post by Diane Haddad, "Chinese Genealogy Resources and Ancestry.com’s Jiapu.cn", [ blog.familytreemagazine.com/insider/PermaLink,guid,9dec156f-bce8-461d-be09-bbee2b409c30.aspx ] - she provides information regarding help for people that cannot read Chinese and are trying to use the new Jiapu.cn website. [ www.Jiapu.cn ]

There are two rather interesting statements in her post:

“There isn’t an English version of the Chinese site, just as there isn’t an English version of our Italian, French, German or Swedish sites,” says Simon Zivian, spokesperson for the Ancestry.com’s international business. “These international sites have been launched in local markets for those markets.”

and also:

"In addition, the jiapu (family histories) on the site are in Chinese. "

Collectively, my impression from these 2 statements is that even if Ancestry.com did provide an English version of their website - the resource materials are in Chinese - hence, it would not be productive to have an English version of "Jiapu.cn" - I would totally disagree.

I cannot read Chinese and I only know just a few Chinese characters, however, I can recognize Chinese names and I am able to determine extensive clan lineages based upon just matching Chinese names.

As many of you know, if you can match the Chinese names of a couple consecutive ancestors to a particular branch of a "jiapu" (family genealogy) and then link it to the larger and more extensive "zupu" (clan genealogy) - this is how you are able to delineate numerous generations in a family/surname lineage.

This is the essence of researching Chinese genealogy and of course, one would need the assistance of a translator to understand the Chinese narratives describing the genealogical information contained in the jiapus/zupus.

As I have already mentioned in another post, [ siyigenealogy.proboards28.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=names&thread=796&page=1#4003 ] I believe it is a dis-service to the approximately 50 million overseas Chinese that may want to research their Chinese genealogical heritage and I am hoping Ancestry.com would seriously consider providing an English version of the Jiapu.cn website.

Does anybody have any ideas how we can focus our concerns regarding this issue to the senior management of Ancestry.com? Perhaps, we can reach a consensus on this SiYi Forum and collectively register our concerns.

Henry

[jefferyseow]

Apologies if this may sound a bit obvious but how about a petition? Get loads of signatures. You know like when they had this thing about the violence in Tibet, I added my name to that one.

[kerry]

I work for a US I/T corporation which is strongly associated with the colour blue. That said, the following are personal opinions framed from my experiences there.

Ancestry.com is a global brand. Think of "Ford". They make cars in many places in the world. Obviously a lot in the US. But they also have a subsidiary in Australia. While the local company may partake of global marketing programs and intellectual capital, they have their own designs and plants here in Oz that make cars a bit different. For instance, the steering wheel is on the right side of the car. (pun intended) If I have a complaint about a Ford Falcon, writing to Detroit will achieve very little.

If I was setting up a Chinese language presence for the brand, it would need to be based in China. Can you imagine if they'd tried to just "translate" the existing form of Ancestry.com into Chinese? I'm sure it would read as badly as many "Chinglesh" signs read to us. So, better to go from "scratch" with a whole posse of Chinese based developers and researchers. (Who are much cheaper to employ than US or Aussie staff - heard of "offshoring"?)

So, they get a website up and running - now they have to make it pay for itself. It's still beta now but I'd expect eventually they'll adopt some sort of subscription fees for services as they do elsewhere. Therefore, I'd focus on getting as much marketable content up there as soon as possible.

But what is the target market? Do they pick on the 6 billion person domestic Chinese market or the 40 million overseas Chinese (of which a small proportion speak english)? You can reach the 6 billion with a Chinese language version of "Who Do You Think You Are?" The diaspora are a bit harder to reach - how many people on this forum? I know which one I'd pick.

Not all doom and gloom though. We could probably get translated version of the service but it would need to be at a cost that makes it worth their while to do it in the first place. But given that decent translation services in China are hard to come by, (read those Chinglesh signs again) it might be expensive. If it ever comes, it would probably only be after they establish their viability in their primary market.

In the mean time: I think we should let them know that there is interest from English speakers. The only way I can think of doing this is using their contact link: jiapu.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/jiapu.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php Put a message there (in Enghlish ;-) ) saying that you'd like to see the service translated. They'll reply with the same message that Henry's already. But they'll know that someone is interested.

[jefferyseow]

If you go to www.friendster.com/, www.smashbros.com/, www.isadora.com/ or any other number of international sites you can select a language option. Even in Malaysia when accessing a government site you can select language option. This allows you to access the "interface" in a language you are familiar with. From there on, when searching for things like articles for example you will get it in the language the article was written in. So in the case of Ancestry, all they would need to do is to provide a language option that transforms their Chinese-language "donut" into an English-language one. From there, searches will reveal stuff in whatever language the stuff was written in. :-) If searchers can just get the instructions in English that would already be a big help. When we then extract vernacular content, we can always come here and ask around for help translating the stuff. It's the site navigation we need to get around first. Surely having the option for English labels for links and menu options etc isn't something beyond Ancestry. Happy new year.

[Henry]

Kerry & Jeffery,

Thank you for the very informative discussion.

Great suggestions for nudging Ancestry.com !

I believe that what we need is an overall template in various languages of the overseas Chinese, such as English, Thai, Indonesian that would allow for a reasonable degree of navigation and query on the Chinese version of Ancestry.com website that focuses on Chinese genealogy records and books. Ultimately, the basic information will still be in Chinese, because I do not think they will ever translate every jiapu/zupu - but, at least illiterate Chinese researchers can find lineages that may be relevant for them.

While I cannot read or write Chinese, I have successfully traced Chinese names in lineages by my ability to recognize of Chinese characters for the names of my ancestors.

I would love to see if a couple of the Chinese literate members of our Forum can work up a cheat sheet of instructions about how to navigate and query this Ancestry website. I think this approach more than any huffing and puffing we might do - is the most reasonable and practical approach to take.

Henry

[Doug 周]

I heard from a previous post siyigenealogy.proboards28.com/index.cgi?board=software&action=display&thread=851 [reply#7] that Ancestry.com www.ancestry.com does not display in Unicode. Of course Jiapu.com www.jiapu.cn is all in Chinese. It sounds like one cannot flip back and forth between Jiapu.com and Ancestry.com since they do not seem to share the same database.

Myheritage.com www.myheritage.com , an Israeli site, encouraged me initially. The same database was used and by clicking a mouse one can move between multiple language interfaces, Chinese and English included. What tempered my enthusiasm: 1. Unicode was displayed but not exported nor imported via GEDCOM. 2. You cannot search using one Chinese character (the error message was that you need at least three text characters to initiate a search) and 3. They increased their fees to U$D 4.00/month for more than 500 profiles.

When I contacted Dynastree www.dyanstree.com about a Chinese interface, their reply was they needed a Chinese language person located in their main office in Hamburg, Germany. Being Eurocentric, there were plans only for Slavic based language expansion. However, their search function is powerful and Chinese character searches based on only one character are accurate. They also export to Unicode GEDCOM.

Geni www.geni.com has a translation template Wiki wiki.geni.com/index.php/Translation for contributors to provide language input. However, reading their forum forum.geni.com/ shows they still have not rolled out their non English sites. Phillip posted about an extensive description of Geni.com siyigenealogy.proboards28.com/index.cgi?board=software&action=display&thread=853 [reply #2] and Geni displays Unicode. I do not know how powerful is their Chinese character search and I think they export Unicode GEDCOM.

Doug

[rhew]

FYI: a message from Ancestry.com re closure of jiapu.cn: apologies in advance for the double posting.

January 27, 2012
Dear Robert,

We appreciate your message.

Unfortunately, there are no current plans to bring back jaipu.cn. The site did not do as well as anticipated, but we may try again in the future.

Ancestry.com still has access to the records from the Shanghai Library, but they will not be released again for an undeterminable amount of time. I believe that you can still find the information at the Shanghai Library, but you would have to physically go to the library to find the information.

If there is anything else with which we might assist you, please let us know.

Julie
Member Solutions
Ancestry.com
ancestry.custhelp.com/

[christine]

The Shanghai library collection can be searched here if you can read and write in Chinese: search.library.sh.cn/jiapu/

[rhew]

I have tried that, but I only get one of 2 messages when I search: either "No records found" or "Records found", and no way to display the ones actually found. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, or whether a feature is disabled for IP addresses outside China. I get the same outcome if I run it in Chinese or if I run it through Google Translate.
Robert

[syquizon]

Still searching for our jiapu.. too bad jiapu.cn closed.. I register there before but was not able to search in their website since I cannot read chinese.. I only know a few chinese character. .. Will try my luck at the shanghai website..