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Part of
Pragmatics and Translation
Edited by Miriam A. Locher, Daria Dayter and Thomas C. Messerli
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 337] 2023
► pp. 221–248

Chapter 10
Contrastive analysis of English fan and professional subtitles of Korean TV drama

| University of Basel
| University of Basel
We compare fan subtitles and subtitles produced by professionals in order to detect what concepts each of them foreground, and how they differ in register and in translation strategy. Differences are systematically explored with the help of corpus-assisted discourse analysis to contrast two sets of English subtitles from 26 Korean dramas and 451 episodes – fan subtitles from Viki and professional subtitles from Netflix. Results reveal that professional translators show more target text orientation, whereas fan translators position themselves and their readers as expert members of their community, aiming for access to the source text. We find no clear difference in register, but professional subtitles are more concise, whereas Viki subtitles are longer and employ, e.g., hedges and disfluency markers.
Keywords: fan translation, domestication, foreignization, cultural ambassadors, corpus linguistics, viki.com
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Research context
    • 2.1Online fan discourses on Korean television-drama
    • 2.2Fan subtitling and pragmatics
    • 2.3Research questions
  • 3.Data and method
    • 3.1Data
    • 3.2Methodology
  • 4.Results of the contrastive corpus analyses
    • 4.1What fan and professional subtitles are about: Keyness
      • Food
      • Korean names and parts of names
      • Address and reference terms
      • Disfluency markers
      • Credit to subtitle authors
    • 4.2Register-differences
    • 4.3Differences in translation strategy
  • 5.Conclusions and outlook
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 September 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.337.10mes
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