1c7 Crash Course Computer Science Chinese: A 40-Episode Bilingual Subtitle Archive

What the Repository Is and Who It Serves

The 1c7/Crash-Course-Computer-Science-Chinese repository is a volunteer subtitle project. A team of translators took the 40-episode Crash Course Computer Science series that CrashCourse published on YouTube between February 2017 and December 2017 and produced a Chinese translation. The result is a set of bilingual subtitle files covering all 40 episodes.

The primary audience is Chinese-speaking students who want an accessible, self-paced introduction to computer science fundamentals. The series does not require prior programming experience and covers hardware, software, networking, algorithms, and artificial intelligence across its 40 episodes, each approximately 10 minutes long. The repository makes the subtitle text available in two forms: a combined file that contains all 40 episodes in one place, and a set of 40 individual files, one per episode.

The repository description notes a total view count of 5.09 million on Bilibili, indicating that the subtitle project found a substantial audience since its publication.

How the content/ Directory Is Organized

The top-level repository contains a README.md, a .gitignore, and a content/ directory. All subtitle content lives inside content/. The README describes two formats available there.

The first is a single combined file that places all 40 episodes' bilingual subtitles into one document. The README labels this file as all subtitles in one file, with both Chinese and English text. The second format splits the content into 40 individual files, with one file per episode. The README describes this second set as shared as individual files, 40 total.

These two formats serve different use cases. The combined file is convenient for searching across all episodes or for processing the entire corpus as a single text. The individual files let someone download only the episodes relevant to a particular study session, or reference a specific episode without loading the full archive. Neither format is described as having a particular encoding beyond being text, and neither includes timestamp data as far as the README documents.

Watching the Series and Downloading Subtitle Files

The recommended way to watch the series is through the 精校版 on Bilibili at bilibili.com/video/av21376839/. The README describes this version as better quality than the earlier first drafts and explicitly recommends watching the 精校版 over the older individual episode links. The page on Bilibili hosts the full 40-episode playlist with the refined Chinese subtitles embedded.

For anyone who wants the subtitle text files directly, they are in the content/ directory on GitHub. The repository does not document a specific tool or script for downloading them. The standard approach is to clone the repository using git or to download the individual files through the GitHub file browser. The README does not include a clone command or any code examples, because the content consists entirely of text subtitle files that require no build step or installation.

The README also links to the original English YouTube playlist from CrashCourse and to community study notes hosted on external platforms including 石墨文档, where other users have published summaries and diagrams for several episodes.

What the 40 Episodes Cover and What They Leave Out

The series runs from the history of computing through to artificial intelligence and future speculation. Episode 1 covers early computing devices including the abacus, the step reckoner, and the punched-card tabulating machine, with mentions of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace. Episodes 2 and 3 move to electronic computing: vacuum tubes, transistors, Boolean logic, and logic gates. Episode 4 explains binary representation and encoding, including ASCII and Unicode.

The series then works through the hardware layer: ALU design in episode 5, registers and RAM in episode 6, CPU architecture in episode 7, and instruction sets in episode 8. Advanced CPU design including pipelining appears in episode 9. Episodes 10 through 16 cover programming history, programming languages, algorithms, data structures, and software engineering. Integrated circuits and Moore's Law appear in episode 17, followed by operating systems, memory storage, and file systems in episodes 18 through 20.

The later episodes cover compression, command-line interfaces, graphics, the personal computer revolution, and graphical user interfaces through episodes 21 to 26. 3D graphics, computer networking, the internet, the World Wide Web, and cybersecurity follow in episodes 27 through 33. The final seven episodes address machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, robots, the psychology of computing, educational technology, and end with a discussion of the technological singularity.

The series does not cover containerization, cloud architecture, distributed systems, or modern DevOps topics, which postdate or fall outside its scope as a broad introduction. It also does not cover formal methods, type theory, or any programming language in depth beyond historical examples.

Human Refinement vs. Machine-Generated Subtitles

YouTube provides automatically generated Chinese subtitles for many videos, including parts of the Crash Course series. Auto-generated subtitles apply speech-to-text transcription followed by machine translation, which for technical content often produces inaccurate or confusing results. Technical terms such as ALU, cache, Boolean logic, and UART typically survive in English or get transliterated imprecisely.

The 1c7 project took a different approach: volunteers translated each episode manually, with a refinement step led by @糖醋陈皮. The README distinguishes between the first-draft versions (released episode by episode beginning in February 2017 and completed by May 2018) and the 精校版, which is the refined edition that corrected errors and standardized terminology across all 40 episodes. The refinement process produced a version specifically recommended by the maintainer over the first drafts.

This distinction matters for technical vocabulary. A manually refined subtitle set that applies consistent Chinese terminology for concepts like the ALU, cache, register, and instruction set is more useful for study than a machine translation that renders the same terms differently in each episode. The README does not document the specific terminology choices made during refinement, but the existence of the refinement pass and the community-noted high view count on Bilibili suggest the output met the standards of a Chinese-speaking technical audience.

Translation Team and Production Timeline

The README credits ten named contributors. The main translators are listed as small-r (on GitHub and Weibo), 糖醋陈皮 (the refinement lead, also on GitHub, Weibo, and a personal blog), ZireHao, gilot, Cindy, 晴空, Crazycat, and others including TMC, LCAR979, and 出门去.

The English-language YouTube series ran from episode 1 on February 22, 2017 to episode 40 on December 21, 2017. The Chinese first-draft translation started five days after the first English episode, on February 27, 2017. All 40 Chinese first-draft translations were finished by March 24, 2018. The refined 精校版 was completed and published on May 1, 2018.

The README notes that the first-draft episode links remain in the README not because they are the recommended viewing option, but for quick scanning of topics and for reference if anyone needs to check an earlier version. This is a practical archive decision rather than an endorsement of the first-draft quality.

The repository's last push was on 2026-08-28, confirming the project is not archived. However, no new episodes have been added since the original 40, and the subtitle content itself has been complete since 2018.

Licence, Limitations, and What the Repository Does Not Cover

The repository has no licence file listed in the top-level entries, and the repository metadata shows the licence as unknown. The README does not include a licence section. Users who want to reuse the subtitle text in their own projects should be aware that the licence terms are not documented. The original Crash Course video content is owned by CrashCourse and published under its own terms on YouTube, which are separate from the repository's subtitle text.

The subtitle archive is a closed set. The 40 episodes translated correspond to the full 40-episode run of the 2017 Crash Course Computer Science series. The repository does not include subtitles for any other CrashCourse series, for any updates to the original series, or for any other educational video collection. Anyone looking for subtitles or transcripts covering more recent computer science topics, machine learning advances after 2017, or other STEM subjects would need to look elsewhere.

The community study notes linked in the README (two 石墨文档 links and a 知识点脑图 mind map) are external resources maintained by other users, not part of this repository. Their availability and accuracy are not guaranteed by the repository maintainer.

Editorial conclusion

Students who want to watch the Crash Course Computer Science series with Chinese subtitles should use the 精校版 on Bilibili at bilibili.com/video/av21376839/ rather than the earlier first-draft versions, which remain in the README only for reference and are explicitly described as lower quality. The repository's content/ directory is the right resource for anyone who needs the raw bilingual subtitle text, for offline study, text processing, or building flash cards from the episode content. The subtitle files cover a fixed set of 40 episodes from 2017 to 2018, so anyone looking for newer computer science video series or recent topics is not served by this repository.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. 1c7/Crash-Course-Computer-Science-Chinese on GitHub
2. Issues
3. Project website
4. README