OOPS, This is No Mistake
<span style='color:gray'>Frank Liu EE'66 and his team begin the task of translating 900 OCW courses into Chinese.</span>
<a href='http://alum.mit.edu/ne/noteworthy/oops.html' target='_blank'>http://alum.mit.edu/ne/noteworthy/oops.html</a>
据朱学恒先生（右）的消息，明年会登载于MIT的TECHNOLOGY REVIEW上
刘容西（麻省理工学院在台校友会会长、全福国际投资有限公司董事长）与朱学恒（OOPS项目负责人、魔戒的翻译者）
"To hear Luc Chu tell it, the open source movement really started with Confucius, who sagely noted around 500 B.C. that 'people hate to see resources lying idle.' The 29-year-old Chu took the adage to heart when he came upon the vast ocean of resources that is MIT's OpenCourseWare.
"The cumulative knowledge of OCW is staggering," says Chu. "What a gift to the world was my first thought." Chu, a professional translator who had just finished a successful and profitable translation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings into Chinese, was looking for a new project when Confuciusan logic took hold. "I realized if I could translate OCW, I could bring a tremendous resource to the Chinese speaking world." But to translate over 900 MIT courses, including video taped class lectures... well, let's say Chu knew this was not a one-man job.
Enter alumnus Frank Liu EE'66, a retired venture capitalist, who had experience putting together complex enterprises. Together he and Chu began to orchestrate a plan of attack. Chu had already decided his best hope was to employ the Open Source model used in software development.
"Open Source allows us to scale up for a project of this size, yet it keeps our resource needs low," explains Liu, a former chair of the MIT Alumni Association of Taiwan and current director of MIT Enterprise Forum Board. The more Chu and Liu talked, the more they realized they were creating a movement that had serious historical implications.
"This is not an economic project," points out Liu. "OCW is not available for resale. It's a project to bring knowledge to parts of the world that would normally not have this access." As they planned, Liu and Chu made an important decision—they wanted to make their translation system portable. "If we build something that can be copied and taken to other countries," says Liu, "then we will have achieved a success that can resonate for many decades to come."
They decided to name their new venture the Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (OOPS), and they began putting together a cohesive plan of attack. "We needed to build in a number of levels of checks to ensure the accuracy of the information," says Chu. "We also needed validation from experts in the field, which is another area where Frank's experience became invaluable."
Liu began to create an advisory board for OOPS, and in a little more than six weeks he built a Who's Who of Taiwan leaders in science, technology, education, and business. Chaired by Dr. Chi yuan Lin PhD Sloan, Chairman of Taipei Bank, OOPS board members include Taiwan's former minister of education, Dr. Oliver Tseng, former president of Tsing Hua University, Dr. David C.L. Liu Sc.D. '62, and Dr. Chao-Shiuan Liu, President of Soo Chow University and former deputy premier of the Republic of China. The 19-member board also includes experts in publishing, television, electronic media, the computer industry, and five MIT alums.
OOPS is built on volunteers, specifically translators, reviewers, editors, multiple levels of readers, and experts in the individual disciplines. The group asks volunteers to commit to just two months of part-time work, and so far they find it a very agreeable time frame. "We have over 636 translators currently working on approximately 738 courses," says Liu. "17 courses are fully translated, with 69 nearing completion." Amazingly, OOPS has accomplished this in just eight months and working off a total budget of a mere $3,000.
But where do you start when contemplating 900 courses? "We created an online voting system among volunteer translators to determine which courses were translated first," says Chu. "It's critical that translators feel a sense of ownership, so we thought it important that they have a voice in how we proceed."
The OOPS approach has not gone unnoticed back at MIT. Administrators of the OCW project are watching OOPS closely to see if it does indeed continue to grow. "We are excited that the Chinese translations of OCW will enable many more people to benefit from our faculty's work," says Anne Margulies, the executive director of OpenCourseWare. "We're particularly intrigued with the OOPS model. If successful, it could potentially be replicated for other languages as well."
While OOPS is still in startup mode, it is already attracting an average of 6,500 users a day, making it the most active OCW site outside of MIT. "It is a big project, with a long way to go," Liu points out. "Our next goal is to increase the number of translators, and my hope is to appeal to the MIT community." Liu says MIT's Chinese-speaking alumni, with their scientific and technical backgrounds, would be ideal translators and reviewers and could move OOPS forward in a hurry. "We feel like OOPS is an important project that could make quite an impact for nations large and small," says Liu. "MIT has given a great gift to the world. It's our intent to make sure this gift is utilize to its potential."
No doubt, Confucius would approve. -James Wolken