The company’s “About Us” page exclaims, “Together with its fans, Viki removes the language and cultural barriers that stand between great entertainment and fans everywhere.” This corporatization of subtitling practices has allowed more fans to get involved in the subbing process. ![]() Of the companies utilizing fansubbing practices, Viki is perhaps the most aggressive in its incorporation of the model. While fansubbing began as a way for fans to navigate around hurdles put in place by the corporate sphere that prevented them from sharing and accessing content, members of the corporate sphere are now incorporating fansubbing practices into their distribution models. Although fan-produced subtitles (known as “fansubs”) have been around for decades, online tools have made the practice more accessible to a larger number of fans. The fan-sourced model utilized by Viki presents an interesting intersection between fan and translation studies additionally, it represents a growing trend in the distribution of online content. Ī quick guide to subtitling from Viki’s “Intro to Subtitling” video Finally, segmenters are responsible for dividing video into timed segments so subitlers can work on writing subtitles in pieces (as opposed to subtitling a whole text at one time). Additionally, the moderators recruit subtitlers to write the show’s subtitles and editors to check the subtitler’s work. Moderators are appointed to supervise a specific language’s subtitling process (e.g., the English moderator oversees the English subtitles, while the Spanish moderator oversees the Spanish subtitles). ![]() The channel manager is responsible for overseeing all translation activity for a show. Each show on Viki has a subtitling team made up of five components: the channel manager, moderators, editors, subtitlers, and segmenters. Of the three sources used in this example, Viki is the most open about its translation process. While DramaFever is less explicit about its subtitling methods (the last time they publicly asked its users to sign up as subtitlers was in 2014 since then, the site has emphasized that its subtitles are written by “professionals”), Netflix uses a combination of firms hired to translate content and translators recruited using a publicly available online test to write subtitles for its content. The difference in translations is due to the difference in translators. In the example I used, the same line was translated as “Hey, don’t you dare sing a loud English song! I’m going to kill you then!” by Viki (another specialized streaming platform), “Don’t you dare sing a loud English song!” by DramaFever, and “Hey, if you sing an English song, I will kill you. As I explored in my previous Flow column, the same source text can yield multiple translations. However, to fully understand how audiences receive foreign texts, it is important to understand how these foreign texts are presented. ![]() Through the rise of streaming platforms, more and more audiences have begun to consume content foreign to them. Specifically, they argue, “Translation is, of course, a rewriting of an original text” and “Rewriting is manipulation.” This argument raises an important question: Who are the manipulators? Answering this question is pertinent not just to the translation industry, which has seen rapid changes with the rise of online distribution methods, but also to global media consumers. While there has been debate on the extent of translation’s subjectivity, this column takes up a viewpoint on translation put forth by Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere in their preface to Lawrence Venuti’s The Translator’s Invisibility: Translation is manipulation. When considering the role of subbing in the viewing experience, it is imperative to remember that the translation process is (somewhat) subjective. Of the two main forms of screen translation (dubbing, where a text’s original audio is replaced by audio in a new language, and subbing, where a text’s original audio is preserved and subtitles are provided on screen), American viewers of Korean dramas typically rely on subbing. viewers are not fluent in Korean, meaning they rely on screen translations when they watch Korean dramas. In the three years since that survey was conducted, Korean dramas have grown in popularity, with large streaming platforms such as Netflix and Hulu adding a number of new Korean programs to their content libraries and specialized streaming platforms such as DramaFever seeing significant subscriber growth. A line from Because This Is My First Life as subtitled by VikiĪccording to a survey conducted in 2014 by the Korea Creative Content agency (a South Korean governmental agency that “oversees and coordinates the promotion of the Korean content industry”), an estimated 18 million Americans enjoy watching Korean dramas.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |