Anthropocene-Era Ecotranslation as Environmental Education in Sinophone Cities such as Hong Kong

Hong Kong and other Sinophone cities have been sites of “ecotranslation,” at first in the print era but, for the past two and a half decades, in the digital era. By ecotranslation, a term I have borrowed from Michael Cronin, I mean the translation of local environmental knowledge; it may be for scientific communication, but based on my observation it is mainly a form of environmental education. The website Plant Babies (https://hkcww.org/hkplant/index.htm) in Hong Kong, for instance, is an intermedial and interlingual translation of scientific plant knowledge for the purpose of plant identification; there are similar sites for snakes, turtles, frogs, salamanders, moths, butterflies, dragonflies, and fireflies. These sites have been done for free by volunteers who are concerned about widespread natural scientific illiteracy in the face of growing threats to biodiversity. Ordinary people, especially young people, cannot identify the commonest species that inhabit the urban space around them, let alone comment on traditional use or scientific understanding thereof. Through online fieldwork and in-person interviews, I will be looking at how public and private ecotranslators in Hong Kong and two other Sinophone cities (Singapore and Taipei) have been trying to educate people about these matters in different jurisdictions, each with its own environmental, political, cultural, and linguistic history, in order to inform more sustainable decisions individually and societally.