ABSTRACT
Fandubbing and fansubbing, the other two widely recognized modes, were originally conceived to facilitate the translation and non-commercial distribution of Japanese anime films and TV series or dramas. Fansubbing and fandubbing projects are typically executed by virtual communities that capitalize on the affordances of networked communication to exploit their members’ skills sets or collective intelligence. The need to forge robust “imagined transnational communities” to oppose the industry’s homogenizing translation practices was the key motivation of anime-centric fans, who contributed their skills, time and genre expertise in an entirely altruistic manner. The emerging body of eye-tracking research seeking to gauge how much effort is required to process abusive subtitles should yield a better understanding of the spectatorial experience that fan audiovisual translation delivers. Research on fansubbing and fandubbing shows that non-representational mediation strategies are beginning to supersede the referential approach that has traditionally underpinned professional audiovisual translation.
