Audiovisual Translation in the Digital Age

The Italian Fansubbing Phenomenon

S. Massidda

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137470362
• eBook ISBN: 9781137470379
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Film & Video
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This pioneering study on fan translation focuses on Italian fansubbing as a concept, a vibrant cultural and social phenomenon which is described from its inception in 2005 to today. It explores far-reaching issues related to fansubbing and crowdsourcing, highlighting in particular the benefits and drawbacks of Web 2.0.

1

Web 2.0: A Marketing Ideology?

Abstract: The concept behind Web 2.0 represents the core topic for this section, a concept that focuses specifically on the groundbreaking phenomena of crowdsourcing and fansubbing. The democratisation of media production brought about by the technical and commercial revolution of Web 2.0 is thoroughly analysed in connection with digital labour (Google and Facebook, for example). A further insight into the issue of copyright infringement is offered in the second section of this chapter. The book derives from the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works to the EULA (End User License Agreement), the complex mechanism employed for strengthening copyright protection against piracy, shedding light on a grey area within a highly controversial system intended to fight crime, but, ultimately, resulting in a breach of copyright.

Massidda, Serenella. Audiovisual Translation in the Digital Age: The Italian Fansubbing Phenomenon. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137470379.0005.

1.1 Digital labour in the age of prosumers

We get all the culture; they get all the revenue.

McKenzie Wark (2012)

A variety of digital tools for a new “participatory culture” (Jenkins 2008) has emerged over the past few years: indeed, neologisms such as “fansubbing” and “crowdsourcing” have now entered the popular lexicon. In an attempt to discuss the logic behind these two apparently interchangeable phenomena, we will introduce the specific context in which they originated.

Following Fernández Costales, “on the basis of the free and – almost – universal access to information, the process known as collaborative translation has gained momentum in the last decade in parallel to the professional practice of translation” (2012:116). The link between these neologisms is the democratisation of media production brought about by the technical and commercial revolution referred to as “Web 2.0”, a concept introduced for the first time by DiNucci and then “reprised”, intertwined with the topic of fan translation, by many scholars (cf. Baym 2009; Bassett 2013; Bogucki, 2009; Bold 2012; Boyd 2014; Chronin 2013. Dwyer 2012; Fernández Costales 2011; Kayahara 2005; Keen 2007; Lovink & Rash 2013; O’Hagan 2009, 2011a, 2011b; Napoli 2010; Pérez-González & Susam-Saraeva 2012; Pérez-González 2013; Sevignani & Fuchs 2013; Sützl, Stalder, Maier & Hug 2012).

In her 1999 article, entitled “Fragmented Future”, DiNucci explained that:

The Web we know now [...] is only an embryo of the Web to come. The first glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear, and we are just starting to see how that embryo might develop. The Web will be understood not as screenfuls of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether through which interactivity happens.

(DiNucci 1999:1)

According to De Kosnik,

personalization is one of the key promises of postindustrial capitalism, since [...] the niche marketing, narrowcasting, and two-way communication facilitated by the web [2.0] all promise to give consumers exactly what each of them wants.

(2013:1)

The first Web 2.0 conference, organised by John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly, was held in 2004. In their opening remarks, they confirmed that “the unique aspect of this migration [...] is that customers are building your business for you”, highlighting the fact that Web 2.0 is fundamentally a marketing ideology. In fact, “ubiquitous computing” (Cronin 2010) in the digital era has given way to “web-as-participation-platforms” (Decrem 2006) exemplified by user-generated content websites (YouTube, for example), and social-networking sites such as Facebook, wikis and blogs, where traditionally passive users have been encouraged to interact, becoming active “prosumers” (Toffler 1980). Originally coined to define the ambiguous role played by consumers intervening in the production process, this portmanteau of “producer” and “consumer” is also applicable to the “proactive” users who have become the real protagonists of the digital revolution, participating in the transformation of goods and services offered by digital multimedia systems.

The “co-creative labour” of fans (Banks and Deuze 2009) generated by the Internet revolution has led to some predictable outcomes aptly summarised by Scholtz in Digital Labour – The Internet as Playground and Factory (2013), a collection of articles discussing “digital labour”, a dual concept perpetually swinging between “work” and “play”. This ambiguity is a “trademark” of Google: its unconventional workspace, where the best engineers collaborate in an informal atmosphere with plenty of free food and games rooms, is a clear attempt to demonstrate that work and play can exist side by side. This confusing notion goes far beyond this fact, embracing the notion not only of regular but also “unpaid employees”, even if Google proudly claims to put users first.

As a matter of fact, Fuchs explains that:

Google [...] exploits and monitors users by selling their data to advertising clients. Half [...] of all people using the Internet access Google, and that is roughly 1.05 billion people [...]. Google would not exist without these users because its profits are based on ads targeted to searches, which means that the search process is value-generating. Google’s more than 1 billion users are [...] largely lacking financial compensation. They perform unpaid, value-generating labour.

(2013:2)

On the occasion of “Multimedia Translation in the Digital Age”,¹ an event recently held by The Centre for Translation Studies at University College London and chaired by Jorge Díaz-Cintas, O’Hagan covered the debated issue of “fan labour”, focusing on the difference between translation crowdsourcing and fan translation. She made it clear that translation in the digital age is becoming “for anyone by everyone”, and that its quality is “fit-for-purpose” depending on that particular purpose or “skopos” (Vermeer 1989).

The term “fansubbing”, which literally defines the activity of “fans producing fansubs for other fans” (Díaz-Cintas and Sánchez 2006) is one of the most widespread forms of amateur translation on the Internet. The tradition of fansubbing started in the 1980s when Japanese “anime” were banned in the United States due to their inappropriate content. Yet, as confirmed by Dwyer, “current research on fansubbing is broadened by examining this phenomenon beyond the strictures of anime subculture alone [ ... ] and exploring the gaps in mainstream subtitling that fansubbing both exposes and fills” (2012:1).

Nowadays, “Internet crowds” (O’Hagan 2014) busy themselves translating US TV shows “thanks to the possibility of exchanging information on a free basis and in real time” (Fernández Costales 2011:1). Individual and altruistic motives are at the roots of fan translation: “DIY communities” (Paulos 2013) translate in order to reduce the delays or to make up for the total lack of official translations by releasing the fansubs within a couple of days after the airdate; as a reaction to the inaccuracy and excessive manipulation of official translations (Italian dubbing, for example), and also as a form of recreation, or “playbour” (a mixture of “play” and “labour”) as defined by Scholtz (2013).

On the other hand, the concept of “crowdsourcing” is closely related to the exploitation of the “wisdom of crowds” (Surowiecki 2005). In The Wisdom of Crowds, using a fine example, Surowiecki demonstrated how the intelligence of many could be worth millions of pounds. In the popular TV game show Who wants to be a Millionaire?, the contestants can appeal to an expert by phone or poll the studio audience. It turns out that “those random crowds of people with nothing better to do on a weekday afternoon than sit in a TV studio, picked the right answer 91 percent of the time” (ibid.:4).

The same logical reasoning lies behind the foundation of Web 2.0, and it is extremely effective: this is exactly what Mark Zuckerberg had in mind when he decided to launch the Translation App on Facebook. On the home page of the Translation Application Guide we find the following disclaimer:

Volunteer translators make it possible for us to make Facebook available in many languages around the world. First of all, thank you for your interest and contributions. You are helping to make Facebook accessible to a lot of people! The purpose of this guide is to show you how to use the translation app and introduce its main features. We hope you will enjoy using the app and this Translation App Guide.²

The above message shows the strategic choice of expressions in the disclaimer notices issued by the company: “volunteer translators”, “make Facebook available”, “interest and contribution”, “help make Facebook accessible”, “hope you will enjoy the app”. Evidently, Facebook Inc. seems to confuse “labour” and “play”, “enjoinment” and “work”, “translation app” and “translation job”.

With their elegant approach, Facebook has offered its users the unique chance to have fun translating their social networking site into more than 70 languages. In turn, other users have evaluated Facebook’s top translations by voting with a simple click in order for top translators to unlock their rewards, just like a game. Web 2.0 user-tailorable technology, allowing good workflow management, has made the project a major success.

“Crowdsourcing” is characterised by users’ “participation in a voluntary, self-selected activity launched as a form of problem-solving” (O’Hagan 2014), in the style of Who wants to be a Millionaire?. The call for help does not come from an unknown contestant participating in a game show, however, but from powerful multinational corporations. In fact, another way of looking at the phenomena of “fansubbing” and “crowdsourcing” is through copyright infringement. While fansubbing is a grassroots activity based on the illegal adaptation of an artistic work, crowdsourcing represents an act of a company launching an open call in order to outsource digital labour to a network of “undefined people” (Howe 2009), and in the best case scenario, for free. In other words, while crowdsourcing is a legal, unethical activity, fansubbing is an illegal, ethical activity (O’Hagan 2014). While in crowdsourcing, copyright holders exploit the digital labour of specialised users to make a profit, the practice of fansubbing is based on the production and distribution of unauthorised translations of copyrighted audiovisual materials without financial compensation.

Fan translation is therefore ethical because it is intended as an unselfish activity, a form of social disobedience, and a reaction to professional translations that do not meet fans’ needs (O’Hagan 2014). According to Rembert-Lang,

selling fansub translations is frowned upon in the fansubbing community and is considered bootlegging. There are, however, live streaming websites and torrent sites that have fansub translations of television programs and movies and accept donations as gifts for running their websites.

(2010:4)

Yet, from whatever angle we look at it, the key concept is that fans’ expertise is not worth paying for. In her blog, spreadablemedia.org, De Kosnik writes:

[...] as long as they do not sell their works, they will be safe from leg...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Web 2.0: A Marketing Ideology?
• 2  The State of the Art of Italian AVT: Dubbing Vis--Vis Subtitling
• 3  Fansubbing
• 4  Subtitling and Fansubbing Standards: A Hybrid Proposal
• 5  Origin of the Italian Fansubbing Phenomenon
• 6  Evolution of ItaSA and Subsfactory
• 7  Censorship and Humour in Californication
• Conclusions A Step into the Future
• References
• Index