We’re excited to announce that the first issue of the Chinese edition of the Google Librarian Newsletter has been released. So that our English-speaking members are not bothered by extra email, the Chinese edition will have its own mailing list. Click here to sign up for the Chinese edition.

I apologize for any inconvenience there may have been when the Chinese edition was sent out on the English mailing list. They are now separate.

We’re working on trying to get the newsletter and site out in other languages as well…. stay tuned for further information.

The January 2006 Google Librarian Newsletter was published this past weekend. If you have subscribed to the list and have your notification preferences set to receive email, you should have received the newsletter in your inbox. If you have not yet subscribed, sign-up today. There’s now a handy sign-up form right here on the blog in addition to the one on the website.

The Chinese version of the newsletter is expected to be out this week. In the future we will try to coordinate our efforts so that they will be released at the same time. Our translator got the newsletter the same time everyone else did, and in the future he will be getting it in advance of publication so that it may be translated.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy! If you have any suggestions for the February newsletter, let me know.

As you may know, Google Librarian has a feature that allows you to view the site in the language of your choice utilizing Google Translate. Google Translate is a very nice feature, however, it is not always entirely correct. Words in the English language are not always translated perfectly over to another language because the computer often can’t understand the context in which the English version of the word is being used. As I understand, the Googlers are constantly working on the translations service to make it better, but there’s still nothing quite as good as a real live human translation.

We are constantly striving to make your experience here at Google Librarian a pleasurable , informative, and useful one, and we’ve now enlisted the help of Rong Wu from the University of Toronto to handle our English to Chinese translations. The January newsletter will first be available in English and Chinese, and then he will move on to translating the entire website. Once the site is translated, the Chinese flag on the site will link to Rong’s translation of the site instead of the Google translated version. I know that this will be a very useful feature for our members, and greatly appreciate Rong’s willingness to help make this site even better.

If your first language is one other than English and you’d be interested in helping to translate Google Librarian, please contact us. We’d love to make you a part of the team! We are interested in translations of all the currently available languages on the site, as well as any others that you have to offer.

Here’s to a happy and prosperous 2006 for all!