The influence of fansubbing on the audiovisual translation industry in Italy

Abstract

A fascination with fansubbing was the impetus for Serenella Massidda to dip her toes in the world of amateur Italian subtitlers throughout her postgraduate career, “infiltrating” their communities with the objective of understanding their practices, ideologies and structures. Audiovisual Translation in the Digital Age: The Italian Fansubbing Phenomenon is the culmination of the insight gleaned through these experiences. Massidda’s stated aim for the volume is to explore the influence of fansubbing on audiovisual translation in Italy, as well as the effect of the norms of fansubbing communities on professional practice, all contextualised within the transformations brought about by the advent of Web 2.0. The democratisation of media access and production, coupled with an unprecedented bidirectionality in feedback between consumers and producers, paved the way for the emergence of fansubbing communities and their growing ability to exert pressure on the media industry. The author finds that this influence has led to transformations in both the prevalence and nature of dubbing in Italy, the speed with which official subtitles are released and the practice norms adopted by professional subtitlers, but it has also been accompanied by falling professional rates and by ethical and legal quandaries. Although these conclusions are soundly argued and substantiated, Massidda frames her study as an attempt to identify general features of fansubbing as well as the evolvement of the practice over time. However, it is disputable to what degree her objects of study, namely the Italian fansubbing communities ItaSA and Subsfactory, are representative of the generality of the fansubbing universe.