[1]Against Black-box Cross-Strait Trade Agreement. Protest icon from CSSTAtranslategroup [2].
Protesters in Taiwan made history on 18 March by occupying the country's legislature [3] in protest of the ruling party's passage of the controversial Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) [4]with China without a promised clause-by-clause review.
Support for the protesters [5] has poured in from a variety of groups, with hundreds of translators organizing themselves through the Facebook group #CSSTAtranslategroup [2] to translate stories about the incident. The group describes its objectives as:
1. Short-term goal: to distribute the press release that has been translated into various languages to international media and government units;
2. Mid-term goal: to watch the next move between the Chinese and Taiwanese Governments closely and translate upcoming news into English and other languages.
The translated articles will be published on the blog Taiwan, not for sale [6]. The full text of the press release is now available in Chinese [7], English [8] and German [9]. There is also a Danish [10] version in summary.
To draw the world's attention to the protest, student activist Yeh Jiunn Tyng translated the following message [11] into 31 different languages on his Facebook profile:
Citizens of Taiwan are now occupying the Legislative Yuan（Legislature), opposing the unjust passing of the Cross-Strait Agreement on Trade in Services. The police are gathering outside the building and preparing to clear the protesters.
This moment is critical for the future and democracy of Taiwan, we need the world's attention. Please share the news to everyone you know, and translate it to other languages. (Please post the translation in the comment of this post, I'll add it in). God bless Taiwan.
His post has been liked over 9,000 times and shared more than 15,000 times.