Pirates(!) Strike Back: Turkish Fansubbers Standing Up for Fansubbing


Yıldız M.

20th European Symposium on Languages for Special Purposes (LSP), Vienna, Austria, 8 - 10 July 2015, pp.67

  • Publication Type: Conference Paper / Summary Text
  • City: Vienna
  • Country: Austria
  • Page Numbers: pp.67
  • Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

This study is primarily intended to describe fansubbing in Turkey and draft a fansubber profile on the basis of a corpus mainly consisting of interviews with “famous” Turkish fansubbers who are seemingly invited for an interview to defend themselves against explicit and implict allegations and attacks. The corpus is comprised of two types of data source, namely print and online media. Drawing on the views of the interviewees, the corpus analysis has revealed that the present study can be built on such matters as legality/ethics, professional recognition, visibility, motives of fansubbing, remunaration, popularity, genre preference, linguistic proficiency, translation process, and demographics. Together with the literature review, the analyses have shown that the most serious accusation brought against fansubbers is copyright infringement (Hatcher, 2005), i.e. “pirating”, whereas the mildest would be mistranslation. Although legal concerns are generally thought to stand out as the severest matter, it is interesting that almost no confrontation exists between fansubbers and copyright holders (Díaz-Cintas and Sánchez, 2006) but with colleagues and subtitling critics (viewers, columnists or scholars). Thus, it can be speculated that professional recognition is the primary concern of fansubbers although their undertaking is a non-profit voluntary work. From this viewpoint, this study focuses, as its secondary concern, on Turkish fansubbers’ endeavour to exist as professionals rather than incompetent amateurs.