Cover not available
Part of
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
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.141.16orr
References (51)
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. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Denison, Rayna. 2011. “Anime Fandom and the Liminal Spaces Between Fan Creativity and Piracy.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 14: 449–466. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle 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.DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle 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. [URL], 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. DOI logoGoogle 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? [URL], Accessed November 10, 2017.Google Scholar
MUSO. 2016. MUSO's Global Film & TV Piracy Insight Report 2016 Released [URL]Google Scholar
Nielsen, Jakob. 2006. The 90–9-1 Rule for Participation Inequality in Social Media and Online Communities. [URL], 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Orrego-Carmona, David. 2014. “Subtitling, Video Consumption and Viewers: The Impact of the Young Audience.” Translation Spaces 3: 51–70. DOI logoGoogle 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.DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle 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. [URL], 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.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (13)

Cited by 13 other publications

Chen, Lin & Kexin Chang
2024. A corpus-based approach to the reception of Chinese television dramas streamed overseas. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 11:1 DOI logo
Calvo, Elisa & Marián Morón
2023. A Reception Study of the Game of Thrones Audiovisual Translations into Spanish: Translation Problems vs. Translation Errors. In Game of Thrones - A View from the Humanities Vol. 1, ► pp. 243 ff. DOI logo
Ferreira, Gabrielle Camille
2023. The role of online fan communities in the popularization of Turkish TV dramas in Brazil. International Communication Gazette 85:3-4 ► pp. 216 ff. DOI logo
Hu, Bei
2023. Translating intercultural interactions in the Netflix-branded film American Factory . Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 35:3 ► pp. 378 ff. DOI logo
Liang, Lisi
2023. How humour travels in the new and dynamic mediascape: a case study of a short video platform, Little Red Book, and an online teaching platform, Rain Classroom. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 10:1 DOI logo
Liang, Lisi
2023. The Chinese Oliver Twist . Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 9:3 ► pp. 352 ff. DOI logo
Moreno García, Luis Damián
2023. Fan indirect subtitling of Cdramas by women in Latin America and the Caribbean. Translation Spaces 12:2 ► pp. 177 ff. DOI logo
Sánchez-Mompeán, Sofía
2023. Engaging English Audiences in the Dubbing Experience: A Matter of Quality or Habituation?. Íkala, Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura 28:2 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Fakharzadeh, Mehrnoosh
2022. A Sociological Approach to Official and Non-Official Audiovisual Translators’ Practice in Iran: The Case of Movie Title Translation. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 51:4 ► pp. 430 ff. DOI logo
Valdeón, Roberto A.
2022. Latest trends in audiovisual translation. Perspectives 30:3 ► pp. 369 ff. DOI logo
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. DOI logo
Perego, Elisa & Ralph Pacinotti
2020. Audiovisual Translation through the Ages. In The Palgrave Handbook of Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility [Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, ], ► pp. 33 ff. DOI logo
Orrego-Carmona, David
2019. A holistic approach to non-professional subtitling from a functional quality perspective. Translation Studies 12:2 ► pp. 196 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 july 2024. 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.