ABSTRACT
Fan translations differ from other non-professional practices such as volunteer translation in the choice of what is translated: whereas much volunteer translation focuses on pro-bono work for non-governmental organizations such as charities, fan translation focuses on translations of texts that are important for a particular group of fans. Fan translation clearly fits into the pattern of fan activities discussed in the literature on fandom. In some cases, fan translations are the only vehicle through which a text may be made available to a different linguistic community, for instance if the text is deemed commercially unviable and hence unworthy of an official translation. Fan translation of video games constitutes another key area of research. The history of fan translation is another neglected area of research and may require searching the archives of fanzines and less-known magazine collections in order to establish what was translated in the past.
