Planet Four Now Available In Traditional Character Chinese

歡迎光臨第四行星！We’re pleased to announce that Planet Four has been translated to traditional character Chinese thanks to the Education and Public Outreach (EPO) office at  Academia Sinica’s Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics (ASIAA). A big thank you to Lauren Huang for translating and Mei-Yin Chou for verifying the translation. I’m a postdoctoral fellow at ASIAA and Lauren, Mei-Yin, and I will  be introducing Planet Four and the new translation to educators from around Taiwan at a teacher workshop on March 2nd as part of a larger workshop on Citizen Science in Astronomy  hosted at ASIAA from March 3-7th. Michael and I will both be attending the full workshop as well.

Also many thanks to the Zooniverse’s Chris Snyder for getting all the technical things set up for the translation to go live on the site in time for the teacher workshop, and thank you to the Zooniverse’s Rob Simpson and Michael Parish for their help as well.

Are you interested in helping translate Planet Four into other languages? Find out more here. 

What follows is the announcement from ASIAA, in English and then in traditional characte Chinese regarding the new Planet Four translation.

No rocketship required, help scientists study Mars from Earth

We need your help to explore Mars. On Planet Four (http://www.planetfour.org/?lang=zh_tw), you will be shown images of the South Pole of Mars taken by the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. We are asking you to mark dark fans and dark blotches that appear and disappear during the Spring and Summer on the South Pole of Mars. During the winter carbon dioxide (CO2) condenses from the atmosphere onto the ground and forms the seasonal ice sheet. The ice begins to sublimate in the spring, and the seasonal cap retreats. The dark fans and blotches begin to appear in the Southern spring when the ice cap begins to thaw and sublimate back into the atmosphere. The fans and blotches then disappear at the end of the summer when there is no more ice left.

We want to study how these fans form, how they repeat from Spring to Spring and also what they tell us about the surface winds on the South Pole. If the fans are places where the wind is blowing, then they tell us the direction and the strength of the wind. Blotches then tell us where there is no wind. This is a task that computers cannot do, but which humans are really good at. We need to collect together many people’s markings and combine the results to be able identify the fans and blotches in the HiRISE. With your help mapping the seasonal fans and blotches, we can better study and understand the Martian climate. Explore Mars today at http://www.planetfour.org/?lang=zh_tw!

(Below is Lauren, the translator, wrote to share her excitement: )

As planetary scientists delight in seeing their probes launched into space, now that the Chinese translation of the Planet Four website is finished, we are also excited for more new volunteers from our own country are about to join this project! Either by way of a probe or a newly added translated language, the two things is similar: opening up a gate to a new world always makes us feel great!

Meg asked me to say a few things as to “why I translate the website for Planet Four”. Of course, the number one motive is serving the community! During the translating process, I constantly thought about the participants of zooniverse, that they are voluntarily doing this, offering their time and resource to support science research; it is our duty to put things in clear Chinese with correct science, so that our helpers can enjoy their science quests with pleasure. However, this task is not easy and is impossible if without my colleague’s help! I’d like to thank Dr. Mei-Yin Chou greatly, who helped verifying each paragraph throughout the site.

Chinese proverb says “one step back, a broaden sky” (退一步海闊天空). I guess whenever people have the time to log in this Planet Four website, it could be a time set aside as a retreat designated of Mars exploration. We are all curious to know more about the fourth planet of our solar system and can’t wait to see how the wind blows there! Have fun!

Help planetary scientists study the climate of Mars at http://planetfour.org/?lang=zh_tw

科學家找你幫幫忙：研究火星氣候不用火箭，立馬就上！

左鄰拉右舍，樓上牽樓下，探索火星氣候需要大家作伙來幫忙。如果你還沒聽說的話，第四行星網站(http://planetfour.org/?lang=zh_tw)是個需要靠人來幫忙辨識圖像的地方，這個網站會顯示一些火星南極圖像給你──這些照片都是由裝在火星偵察軌道機上的HiRISE照相機從火星南極現場拍回來的。按電腦程式出題，網站會請分類員對黑色暗斑和扇形圖像做出標示。這些圖像春季出現、夏季消失，地點是在火星南極。冬季時，火星大氣中的二氧化碳(CO2)會在地面上結凍，形成季節性冰席（ice sheet）。當春季來臨，火星南極的冰冠開始融化，昇華到大氣，到盛夏所有冰層都融化的時候，這些黑色扇形物跟斑點就全部消失了。

第四行星計畫想研究的是這些扇形如何形成，如何年復一年地循環著春夏秋冬四季，並認識南極地表的風。暗斑代表無風，而如果有風在吹則會形成扇形，我們能依此知道風的方向和強度。這項任務特徵是，電腦做不來，但人類卻能輕鬆做到，所以只要將很多人的標示結果集中結合在一起，就能辨識出HiRISE取回影像中那裡有扇形和暗斑。如此，按季節頻頻出現的扇形和暗斑，在你的協助下，就能協助我們更清楚了解火星氣候。啟程探索火星，不用火箭，今天就可以出發：http://www.planetfour.org?lang=zh_tw

（以下是中文版譯者黃珞文簡單心得分享：）

就像行星科學家因衛星發射而心情歡欣雀躍，我們完成了第四行星中文網站，也因將有一大群新分類員加入本計畫而令人充滿期待；衛星飛越太空，翻譯的人橋接了語言之隔，總之，一個美麗新世界即將亮相！

Meg要我講下翻譯的部分，我們在翻譯過程中最關心的是使用者需求，因為我想到宇宙動物園網站使用者都是自願的義務分類員，在閒暇之餘貢獻自己的資源來協助科學計畫達成目標，所以，能不能讓這群使用者在中文環境下、盡量負擔較小又輕鬆愉快地達成任務呢？感謝周美吟博士的幫忙，在易讀和科學正確這兩項指標上她都幫了大忙！不過如果有哪裡錯誤，還請跟我們說喔！

中國人說「退一步海闊天空」，天是無限想像飛馳的去處，無論平常的身分是什麼，若是有時間登入這個網站時，邀請大家能懷著「即將成為千萬公民科學參與者之一」的寬闊，也帶著些許好奇，一同來鑑識看看這太陽系的第四顆行星上，風會怎麼吹！祝旅途愉快！
天文學家請你幫幫忙！了解火星氣候，今天就上：http://www.planetfour.org?lang=zh_tw