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Article published In:
Babel
Vol. 67:5 (2021) ► pp.620–645

Understanding intervention in fansubbing’s participatory culture

A multimodal study on Chinese official subtitles and fansubs

| University of Liverpool
| University of Liverpool

The development of digital technology over the past two decades has made audiovisual products an indispensable way of entertainment and witnessed the emergence of new sociocultural phenomena, including the rise of participatory culture and civic engagement. Drawing on the Systemic Functional Linguistics-informed multimodality, this article compares some of the most distinct practices in official subtitles and fansubs in the complex sociocultural context of China. The aim is to examine how fansubbers manipulate semiotic resources to design highly innovative strategies and investigate how these interventionist practices maximize their visibility and increase the film’s participation. The results show that Chinese fansubbers tend to produce subtitles in a highly aesthetic, functional, and semiotically coherent way by breaking the conventions established by the professionals. This tendency is not only a reflection of their resistance and dissatisfaction with the official subtitles under the state constraints but also a manifestation of the rapidly developing participatory culture in this increasingly digitalized world.

Keywords: fansubbing, subtitling, participatory culture, multimodal, intervention
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Participatory media fandom in the digital era
    • 2.2The proliferation of grassroot Chinese fansubbing
  • 3.A multimodal framework for the analysis of subtitling practices
    • 3.1Rationale for multimodal analysis of subtitled films
    • 3.2The SFL-based multimodal transcription
  • 4.Data analysis: A multimodal description of official subtitles and fansubs
    • 4.1Diegetic narrative vs. non-diegetic narrative
    • 4.2Static subtitles vs. karaoke-style subtitles
    • 4.3“One size fits all” subtitles vs. emotive subtitles
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 29 September 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00236.lu
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