Chapter published in:
Reception Studies and Audiovisual Translation
Edited by Elena Di Giovanni and Yves Gambier
[Benjamins Translation Library 141] 2018
► pp. 321–342

Chapter 15
New audiences, international distribution, and translation

The interconnectivity made possible by the technological advancements of the past three decades has changed the way how audiences engage with audiovisual content around the world. On the one hand, viewers have become empowered consumers who are also engaged in the distribution of content; on the other, companies serving global audiences have emerged as key players in the audiovisual market. With more access to content, through piracy or official channels, new consumption habits, such as binge watching, have become common among viewers. Non-professional subtitling has played a key role in the expansion of the audiovisual market, the configuration of international audiences and the development of new viewing traditions. By looking at non-professional subtitling as a constituent of the international media flows, this chapter proposes Translation Studies should look at the reception of non-professional subtitles at a global scale to understand the interplay between non-professional subtitling, its producers/users and the audiovisual market, as well as the societal impact of the phenomenon.
Keywords: binge watching, piracy, convergence, non-professional subtitling, reception
Article outline
  • 1.The empowerment of users
  • 2.Piracy, media consumption, and audiences
  • 3.Binge watching: From piracy to Netflix
  • 4.The role of translation: From fansubbing to non-professional subtitling
  • 5.Exploring the new audiences through translation and understanding translation through new audiences
  • 6.Final remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 15 June 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.141.16orr
References
Anderson, Chris
2006 The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. New York: Hyperion.Google Scholar
Ballano, Vivencio O.
2016 Sociological Perspectives on Media Piracy in the Philippines and Vietnam. Singapore: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bold, Bianca
2011 “The Power of Fan Communities: An Overview of Fansubbing in Brazil.” Tradução em Revista 11 (2): 1–19.Google Scholar
Brems, Elke, and Sara Ramos Pinto
2013 “Reception and Translation.” In Handbook of Translation Studies, ed by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer, vol. 4, 142–147. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bruns, Axel
2009 “The User-Led Disruption: Self-(Re) Broadcasting at Justin.tv and Elsewhere.” In Proceedings of the 7th European conference on interactive TV and video, Leuven, Belgium, ed by Dirk de Grooff, 87–90. New York: ACM.Google Scholar
Casarini, Alice
2014a The Perception of American Adolescent Culture Through the Dubbing and Fansubbing of a Selection of US Teen Series from 1990 to 2013. PhD thesis, Università di Bologna, Forlì, Italy.Google Scholar
2014b “Viewership 2.0: New Forms of Television Consumption and their Impact on Audiovisual Translation.” inTRAlinea Special Issue: Across Screens Across Boundaries: n.p.Google Scholar
Castells, Manuel, and Gustavo Cardoso
(eds) 2013 Piracy Cultures: How a Growing Portion of the Global Population Is Building Media Relationships Through Alternate Channels of Obtaining Content. Los Angeles: USC Annenberg Press.Google Scholar
Chang, Pin-Ling
2017 “Chinese Fansubbing of US TV Show “The Big Bang Theory”: From Ideological Perspectives.” In Non-Professional Subtitling, ed by David Orrego-Carmona and Yvonne Lee, 233–258. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Chaume, Frederic
2013 “The Turn of Audiovisual Translation: New Audiences and New Technologies.” Translation Spaces 2: 105–123. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chu, Donna S.
2012 “Fanatical Labor and Serious Leisure: A Case of Fansubbing in China.” In Frontiers in New Media Research (Routledge Research in Information Technology and Society), ed by Francis L. Lee, Louis Leung, Jack L. Qiu and Donna S. C. Chu, 259–277. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Cronin, Michael
2012 Translation in the Digital Age. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Danaher, Brett, Samita Dhanasobhon, Michael D. Smith and Rahul Telang
2010 “Converting Pirates Without Cannibalizing Purchasers: The Impact of Digital Distribution on Physical Sales and Internet Piracy.” Marketing Science 29 (6): 1138–1151. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Denison, Rayna
2011 “Anime Fandom and the Liminal Spaces Between Fan Creativity and Piracy.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 14: 449–466. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Díaz Cintas, Jorge, and Pablo Muñoz Sánchez
2006 “Fansubs: Audiovisual Translation in an Amateur Environment.” JoSTrans, The Journal of Specialised Translation 6: 37–52.Google Scholar
Duraner, Jarmin E., Gülfer Tunali and Müge Işıklar Koçak
2017 “Fansubbers as Cultural Agents for Korean Dramas.” In Non-Professional Subtitling, ed by David Orrego-Carmona and Yvonne Lee, 145–170. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Dwyer, Tessa
2012 “Fansub Dreaming on ViKi: “Don’t Just Watch but Help When You Are Free”.” The Translator 18 (2): 217–243. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fernández Costales, Alberto
2012 “Collaborative Translation Revisited: Exploring the Rationale and the Motivation for Volunteer Translation.” Forum 10 (1): 115–142.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gambier, Yves
2016 “An Obsession: .com Between the Rocky Shores of Myth and the New Balance of Powers.” Studies About Languages 27: 5–19.Google Scholar
Gambier, Yves, and Sara Ramos Pinto
2016 “Introduction.” Target 28 (2): 185–191.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hemmungs Wirtén, Eva
2013 “Swedish Subtitling Strike Called Off! Fan-to-Fan Piracy, Translation, and the Primacy of Authorisation.” In Amateur Media: Social, Cultural and Legal Perspectives, ed by Dan Hunter, Ramon Lobato, Megan Richardson and Julian Thomas, 125–136. Abingdon, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Henry
1992 Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. (Studies in culture and communication). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
2006a Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
2006b Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Jiménez-Crespo, Miguel A.
2017 Crowdsourcing and Online Collaborative Translations. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Karaganis, Joe
(ed) 2011a Media Piracy in Emerging Economies. New York: Social Science Research Council.Google Scholar
2011b “Rethinking Piracy.” In Media Piracy in Emerging Economies, ed by Joe Karaganis, 1–74. New York: Social Science Research Council.Google Scholar
Kosnik, Abigail de
2010 Piracy Is the Future of Television. http://​boletines​.prisadigital​.com​/piracy​_future​_television​-full​.pdf, Accessed November 27, 2016.Google Scholar
Luczaj, Kamil, Magdalena Holy-Luczaj and Karolina Cwiek-Rogalska
2014 “Fansubbers: The Case of the Czech Republic and Poland.” Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology – Compaso 5 (2): 175–198.Google Scholar
Massidda, Serenella
2012 The Italian Fansubbing Phenomenon. PhD Thesis, Università degli Studi di Sassari, Sassari, Italy.Google Scholar
Matrix, Sidneyeve
2014 “The Netflix Effect: Teens, Binge Watching, and On-Demand Digital Media Trends.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 6 (1): 119–138. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mattelart, Tristan
2013 “Audiovisual Piracy, Informal Economy, and Cultural Globalization.” In Piracy Cultures: How a Growing Portion of the Global Population Is Building Media Relationships Through Alternate Channels of Obtaining Content, ed by Manuel Castells and Gustavo Cardoso, n.p. Los Angeles: USC Annenberg Press.Google Scholar
Mendes Moreira De Sa, Vanessa
2014 “The Collaborative Production of Amateur Subtitles for Pirated TV Shows in Brazil.” In Piracy: Leakages from Modernity, ed by James Arvanitakis and Martin Fredriksson, 285–306. Sacramento, California: Litwin Books.Google Scholar
Mittell, Jason
2009 To Spread or to Drill? https://​justtv​.wordpress​.com​/2009​/02​/25​/to​-spread​-or​-to​-drill/, Accessed November 10, 2017.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Jakob
2006 The 90–9-1 Rule for Participation Inequality in Social Media and Online Communities. http://​www​.nngroup​.com​/articles​/participation​-inequality/, Accessed November 10, 2017.Google Scholar
Olohan, Maeve
2014 “Why Do You Translate? Motivation to Volunteer and TED Translation.” Translation Studies 7 (1): 17–33. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Orrego-Carmona, David
2014 “Subtitling, Video Consumption and Viewers: The Impact of the Young Audience.” Translation Spaces 3: 51–70. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2015 The Reception of (Non) Professional Subtitling. PhD thesis, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain.Google Scholar
2016a “A Reception Study on Non-Professional Subtitling: Do Audiences Notice Any Difference?” Across Languages and Cultures 17 (2): 163–181.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2016b “Internal Structures and Workflows in Collaborative Subtitling.” In Non-professional Interpreting and Translation in the Media, ed by Rachele Antonini and Chiara Bucaria, 211–230. Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Orrego-Carmona, David, and Simon Richter
Forthcoming). “Tracking the Distribution of Non-Professional Subtitles to Study New Audiences”.
Pérez-González, Luis
2010 “ ‘Ad-Hocracies’ of Translation Activism in the Blogosphere: A Genealogical Case Study.” In Text and Context: Essays on Translation & Interpreting in Honour of Ian Mason, ed by Mona Baker, Maeve Olohan and María Calzada Pérez, 259–287. Manchester, UK, Kinderhook, NY: St. Jerome Pub.Google Scholar
2012 “Co-Creational Subtitling in the Digital Media: Transformative and Authorial Practices.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 16 (1): 3–21. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2013 “Amateur Subtitling as Immaterial Labour in Digital Media Culture: An Emerging Paradigm of Civic Engagement.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 19 (2): 157–175. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Strangelove, Michael
2015 Post-TV: Piracy, Cord-Cutting, and the Future of Television. (Digital futures). Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Sun, Na, Patrick P. -L. Rau and Liang Ma
2014 “Understanding lurkers in online communities: A literature review.” Computers in Human Behavior 38: 110–117. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tapscott, Don & Anthony D. Williams
2006 Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. New York: Portfolio.Google Scholar
The Nielsen Company
2016 Video on Demand: How the Worldwide Viewing Habits Are Changing in the Evolving Media Landscape. http://​www​.nielsen​.com​/content​/dam​/nielsenglobal​/eu​/docs​/pdf​/Nielsen​-global​-video​-on​-demand​.pdf, Accessed May 13, 2017.Google Scholar
Tian, Yuan
2011 Fansub Cyber Culture in China. MA dissertation, Georgetown University.Google Scholar
Yang, Xue, Guoxin Li and Songshan S. Huang
2016 “Perceived Online Community Support, Member Relations, and Commitment: Differences Between Posters and Lurkers.” Information & Management 54 (2): 154–165.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Beseghi, Micòl
2021. Bridging the gap between non-professional subtitling and translator training: a collaborative approach. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 15:1 ► pp. 102 ff. Crossref logo
Fakharzadeh, Mehrnoosh
2021. A Sociological Approach to Official and Non-Official Audiovisual Translators’ Practice in Iran: The Case of Movie Title Translation. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research ► pp. 1 ff. Crossref logo
Orrego-Carmona, David
2019. A holistic approach to non-professional subtitling from a functional quality perspective. Translation Studies 12:2 ► pp. 196 ff. Crossref logo
Perego, Elisa & Ralph Pacinotti
2020.  In The Palgrave Handbook of Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility, ► pp. 33 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 march 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.