Unofficial Translation Research Articles

Domestication and Foreignization Translation Strategies Used in Nepali Constitution

This research examines the domestication and foreignization translation strategies used in the Constitution of Nepal 2015 analyzing official and unofficial translations of the constitution. How these translation strategies have been used to convey the source language (SL) message to the target language (TL) readers despite the linguistic and cultural differences is searched. The corporate author’s official translation of the Law Book Management Board (LBMB) and the unofficial translation by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) have been used to collect, analyze, and interpret data. Venuti’s translation theory of domestication and foreignization is used for the theoretical framework. The objective of this research is to find the effectiveness of these two strategies for the translation of the Nepali constitution. This research finds both the domestication and the foreignization translation strategies have been used in parallel for the translation of the Constitution of Nepal 2015. It concludes that using both strategies simultaneously as complements of one another increases the comprehensibility of the translation.

“This kind of life has no meaning”

“This kind of life has no meaning”

Exploring new forms of audiovisual translation in the age of digital media: cybersubtitling and cyberdubbing

ABSTRACT The prevalence and popularity of audiovisual content in the current times has resulted in a wide range of practices which have been categorised within audiovisual translation (AVT) research as examples of fan translation, amateur translation, crowdsourcing or collaborative translation, among others. While some practices can be included under these categories, other forms of AVT that have recently emerged are not as clear-cut. Against this backdrop, this article explores the conceptual uncertainties surrounding these new AVT practices, with a focus on dubbing and subtitling, by revisiting the work carried out by the authors, who have previously suggested the use of the umbrella terms ‘cybersubtitling’ and ‘cyberdubbing’. In addition to providing a revised classification, the paper emphasises the need to explore the wider social and ethical consequences of these innovative translational activities. As regards ethical implications, altruist and fan practices are the ones most exposed to malpractice, often because some organisations emulate corporate behaviour but rely on free labour, without any financial retribution or credit towards those involved in these activities. The article also concludes that more critical research should be conducted to unravel the impact of these practices on the role of translation as a socio-professional activity.

Fan translation and affective mediation

Abstract This study seeks to foreground the concept of ‘affective mediation,’ which is defined as an interventionist process in translation wherein affect is matched, managed, and modulated between communicating bodies. Situated in the context of fan translation, this study utilizes a multimodal analysis of the subtitling practice of Hiddles’ Translation Army of China, a Chinese internet-based, celebrity-oriented fan translation group, and identifies three ways its fansubbers mediate affect toward the object of fandom, i.e., British actor, Tom Hiddleston. The findings suggest that the fansubber’s mediation is conducive to restructuring the affective configuration in the target text and creates a site for emotive performance in fansubbing. The study also argues that affect-mediated fansubbing opens a new space outside the diegetic zone for an imagined interaction and relationship between the entire fandom community and the object of fandom.

A socio-biographical investigation on trajectory and primary habitus of Chinese digitally-born fan translators

ABSTRACT The dynamic and participatory nature of the Internet has led researchers to examine the role of fast-growing digitally-based fan translation communities. Studies on fan translation are on the rise, but there has been little research on why fan translators inherently engage in translation activity or what social variables drive their participation. The dynamics of translation formation and the power dynamics that emerge at each level of the translation process are thought to be significantly influenced by prior socialisation experiences and historical constructs of translators. Thus, a diachronic investigation of the activity and motivations of fan translators in a specific social setting merits scholarly attention. Adopting Pierre-Bourdieu’s analytical concept of primary habitus, this article sets out to examine whether the motivations of fan translators’ participation in rendering foreign audiovisual materials are related to their early-formed dispositions. By collecting demographic and socio-biographical information through online questionnaires completed by 59 participants, as well as conducting semi-structured interviews with 21 participants, this study indicates that fan translators’ early dispositions, which are shaped by multicultural family upbringings and bilingual school education, contribute to the development of a digitalised and westernised primary habitus. This primary habitus is correlated with their future participation in online fansubbing communities.

Fan Translation: A Look into the Chinese Fansubbing Group Beverly Fansub on Bilibili

The rapid development of information and technology has led to the emergence of numerous video platforms sharing. In parallel, Fansubbing groups have thrived, serving as influential channels for cross-cultural exchanges. This paper examines the contextual factors driving the expansion of Chinese Fan Translation, using Beverly Fansub as a case study. It explores the distinctive attributes of this Fansubbing group and investigates the significance and potential drawbacks associated with fan translation.

Labour of love: Chinese-to-English fan translations of BL web novels

The genre of boys’ love (BL) has enjoyed huge popularity since its Japanese beginnings in the 1960s, and it has taken root in popular cultures in many countries. BL arrived in China via fan translations of Japanese manga into Chinese. With the rise of online fiction platforms in China, local writers produced widely popular male–male romances that gained traction locally and abroad. The outflow of Chinese BL mirrors fan activities that led to the popularity of Japanese manga and anime in the United States. Fan translations of Chinese-to-English BL fiction are one of the most important links in introducing Chinese BL to the rest of the world. This article focuses on the cultural outflow of Chinese BL through fan translations in gloBLizing the genre. Through interviews with five teams and one individual fan translator, this article examines their roles played in the dissemination of BL web novels beyond the native Chinese-speaking world. These fan translators all resided in anglophone countries, and are diverse in their cultural and linguistic backgrounds, ages and BL interests. We interviewed fan translators that translated works from fantasy, alternative history and contemporary romance. Some of these works have been adapted into multimedia and some have not.

Chinese Popular Culture in Translation and Transmission

The introduction to the Special Issue, ‘Chinese Popular Culture in Translation and Transmission’, provides an overall view of the theme. It starts with a discussion of the definition of popular culture and its powerful presence in today’s world assisted by technological development. To follow is a sketch of Chinese popular culture in the contemporary political and cultural context. We then propose a translational perspective, through which modes and issues of exchange, mediation and intervention when Chinese popular culture enters the western cultural and ideological landscape can be located, examined and analysed. Finally, five articles in this special issue – respectively on ‘tai chi’, Peppa Pig and China, internet celebrities and Chinese learning, Chinese online literature in English translation and fan translation of BL web novels – are briefly introduced. When read together, the collection reveals some paradigms and trends of Chinese popular culture in global cultural flow.

PECULIARITIES OF SLANGISMS TRANSLATION IN ANNA TODD’S NOVEL «AFTER»

Background. The article is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of the translation of slangisms in Anna Todd’s novel After. The authors define slang as fragile, unstable, non-codified, and often completely random collections of lexemes that exist in the colloquial sphere, reflecting the public consciousness of people belonging to a certain social or professional environment. Slangisms are units of the lexical and phraseological system of slang used in popular oral and written speech. This article compares the translations of the novel After by the modern American writer A. Todd into Russian.
 Purpose. The purpose of the article is to study the features of the translation of slangisms on the example of official and unofficial (amateur) translations of A. Todd’s novel After.
 Materials and methods. The material of the study is A. Todd’s novel After, its official translation by M. Belyakov and an unofficial translation taken from the Ficbook.com website, performed by an amateur translator. During the study, a set of complementary research methods was used: theoretical analysis of scientific research on the problem, continuous sampling method, analysis and interpretation of the results obtained.
 Results. Based on the analysis of the corpus of examples, it was revealed that when translating slangisms in A. Todd’s novel After, such translation techniques as variant correspondence, semantic development, and contextual translation were most often used. When translating slangisms, translators considered such factors as the age, social and personal qualities of the characters, as well as the unique style of the author’s language.

Alaviitteet Cthulhun kunniaksi!

Translators are often most visible when they deviate from the norms and expectations of the receiving culture. In this article, I examine how the most recent Finnish translations of H. P. Lovecraft make the translator visible both on a textual and paratextual level, especially via translator’s notes and prefaces, by challenging the expectations and norms of contemporary Finnish literary translations. This article uses the most recent Finnish Lovecraft translations from 2021 and 2022 as a case study of the translator’s visibility. The translation deviates from common expectations of Finnish literary translations and may be seen as more in line with practices and norms of fan translation.

"정동적 노동으로서의 팬 번역: 아미의 방탄소년단 노래 가사 번역을 중심으로 "

"정동적 노동으로서의 팬 번역: 아미의 방탄소년단 노래 가사 번역을 중심으로 "

Fan translation and film criticism in China

Abstract Film criticism in China has been changing due to a growing fan community and their active participation in online film reviewing. While social media has democratized who can write reviews, there remain distinct hierarchies of professional and amateur reviewers. Drawing upon Henry Jenkins’ (2006b) concept of “knowledge community” and Alex Bruns’ “produsage” model (2008), this article will explore how Chinese film fans use translation to shape the online reception of a film and participate in the debates over film criticism in the digital age. Through a case study of the Chinese translations of an English review of The Wandering Earth (2019), a Chinese sci-fi blockbuster, it argues that translation, as an alternative form of self-expression, constitutes both an important cinematic experience for fans and a response by grassroots consumers to the existing reviewing system influenced by media capital.

Red capes, dog gods and demon lords: Making historically plausible Inuyasha cosplay costumes

This article presents a close reading of two costume designs from Takahashi Rumiko’s Inuyasha series (manga 1996–2008), and details the methods used to create a pair of cosplay costumes. It will explore how character designs are imbued with identity and narrative foreshadowing. Throughout this article, reference will be made to fan scholarship in addition to more academic sources. As Matt Hills points out with his model of the ‘scholar-fan’, fans are often conducting research and work that academics have yet to address, and this is often the case with anime fandom. Further, my work on cosplay treats fan-constructed costumes as an act of fan translation akin to other activities such as ‘scanlations’, that is scanned translations of manga, comics or graphic novels.

Catalan Identity and Language Attitudes Through Fan Translation of Video Games in the Digital Wilds

ABSTRACT For fans of popular cultural products, digitization has meant the configuration of affinity spaces online and opportunities for learning in the “digital wilds,” including incidental language learning and identity development. Through online multiparty written interaction, we explored how 15 Catalan-speaking gamers organized themselves to translate games from English into Catalan. Results indicated distributed roles, routinized translation practices, and, through translating and commenting on new members’ translation tests, the emergence of folk linguistic attitudes and beliefs regarding Spanish-Catalan interference, changes to Catalan linguistic norms, or positionings towards the group’s English-Catalan translation strategy: They favored creative expressions and what they believed were idiosyncratic language choices with symbolic power to signal what Catalan is or ought to be. The group of fan translators configured a site for metapragmatic discussion and identity development which navigates across monoglot/heteroglossic, prescriptive/descriptive/idiosyncratic conceptions of language, manifesting grassroots linguistic activism fueled by the diglossic status of the Catalan language.

Fansub and Religious Translation: Exploring the Translation Techniques for Online Da'wah Videos

This study explores the techniques used in the audiovisual translation process of religious da’wah videos. The study used Molina and Albir translation techniques category. The study's object was three Youtube videos from Nouman Ali Khan Indonesia Channel, which focused on making subbed videos from Nouman Ali Khan Official Youtube Channel. The study discovers that the fan translators utilized varied techniques of translation. Every video at least had more than ten types of techniques, with the literal translation technique becoming the most used among all. The fansubbers also utilized other techniques to tackle the translation of Arabic data, such as omission, transliteration, and transcription. This study affirms that literal translation is a dominant technique applied for English-Indonesian translation. The Arabic data, however, comprise a small part of the finding, showing an interesting discovery as some techniques are unavailable in Molina and Albir categories. This study affirms the position of fansubber can apply different techniques of translation, although the literal translation is the most dominant one.

Countering political enchantments in digital China: With reference to the fan-remix Meeting Sheldon

ABSTRACT Despite growing scholarly interest in fan audiovisual translation, how fan translators exploit fictional content for online protests of real-world issues has not been thoroughly explored in the literature. This article examines the fan-driven metamorphosis of the US sitcom The Big Bang Theory in the Chinese online space, focusing on the fan-remix “Meeting Sheldon”, produced by the China-based fandubbing group Y Show Club amidst online protests against the original show’s official ban in China. Y Show Club paired audiovisual clips from the original series with newly dubbed tracks and subtitles in Mandarin and English. In doing so, they combined new content and the original sitcom characters at the intersection between fiction and reality to reimagine the present and future within the state apparatus of political enchantments.

Chinese translational fandoms: Transgressing the distributive agency of assemblages in audiovisual media

This article seeks to critically reassess common interpretations of translational fandoms light of recent developments in the Chinese context. It further negotiates the rationale and theoretical implications of fan-based engagement for altering media globalisation and fandom studies, with reference to the transgressive engagement of fan translators with the transnational distribution of audiovisual media. Building on this, the ensuing exploration situates the non-representational work of fansubbing in a distributive agency of media assemblages and aligns it with the theory of digital intermediation. This article further argues that fansubbing is no longer the sole mechanism for translating global entertainment media on the Chinese internet, as shown by the fan work of translational remix. In this emerging translatorial engagement, media fans transgress linguacultural boundaries to recalibrate the distributed media into local contexts of prosumption. The findings may yield significant revaluation of preconceived ideas and, accordingly, more comprehensive understanding of translational fandoms.

플랫폼상에서 이루어지는 웹툰 팬 번역의 특징과 가능성 — 네이버 웹툰(WEBTOON)과 토리코믹스(Torycomics) —

With the Korean webtoon gaining popularity around the world, the webtoon ecosystem for more convenient producing, exposing, and distributing of contents is created by platform companies. This study investigates the nature and implications of fan translation carried out on WEBTOON and Torycomics, online webtoon platforms, focusing on technical assistance provided by platform companies, rewards for fan translators, evaluation of fan translation, and utilization of language data. Literary review and an interview with Bae Soo Ho, CEO of Torycomics, revealed that platform companies create a transnational stage for fans by setting translation guidelines and rules, monitoring fan activities and providing technical assistance so that fans can easily complete translation and share their favorite cultural contents. The translation process is user-friendly with nothing needs to be installed: fans get access to original contents on companies’ websites or mobile apps, use upgraded tools provided online to translate and upload their translation, which will instantly shared with webtoon fans around the world. The webtoon-specific language data is built up with categories for onomatopoeia, culture-specific words, and slang. The database creates revenues for companies by being channeled into online dictionaries and machine translators or sold to other companies.

Fan translation in the Vietnamese context: a preliminary study

ABSTRACT This preliminary study asks what genres and languages are translated by fans in the Vietnamese context, using a methodology based on distant reading of materials available on the Youtube website. While there is a growing body of work on fandom and fan translation, little focuses on postcolonial locations such as Vietnam. Due to its history of colonisation and the shifts in language use that have resulted from colonisation and independence, there is a long history of voluntary translation in Vietnam that has contributed to the development of a thriving fan translation culture in the Vietnamese language. After examining the postcolonial position of Vietnam and the history of voluntary translation in the country, this article examines the first hundred videos found on Youtube using the search term “Vietsub”. Youtube was chosen for its popularity and international reach, as well as the abundance of Vietnamese subtitled videos on the website. The findings show that many of the videos come from Asian countries such as Korean and China, questioning the hegemony of Anglophone text production seen in fan studies. Furthermore, the main genres for translation on Youtube are TV shows and songs, highlighting fan investment in popular media.

Online collaboration and identity work in a brony fandom: Constructing a dialogic space in a fan translation project

Online collaboration has become a regular practice for many Internet users, reflecting the emergence of new participatory cultures in the virtual world. However, little is yet known about the processes and conditions for online collaboration in informally formed writing spaces and how these create opportunities for participants’ identity work. This ethnographic case study explores how four young adults, fans of the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (bronies), negotiated a dialogic space for their online collaboration on a fan translation project and how this created opportunities for their identity work. After a year of participant observation, we collected interviews, ethnographic diaries and participants’ chats, which were analysed with qualitative content and discourse analysis methods. The findings showed how the Etherpad online writing platform used by the participants facilitated the construction of dialogic space through the visualization of a shared artefact and adjustable features. It was in this dialogic space where the participants negotiated their expert identities which furthered their discussions about writing, translating and technological innovations. The study advances present-day knowledge about online collaboration in affinity groups, engendering the construction of a dialogic space for collaborative writing and participants’ identity work.