Transcultural literacies in online collaboration: a case study of fanfiction translation from Russian into English

ABSTRACT

This study analyses the transcultural meaning-making and literacies that arise during the amateur translation of a fanfiction novel from Russian to English. We applied digital ethnography to make observations of the translation process and interviews with the participants. Transcultural meaning-making was identified during their discussions on how to adapt a Russian fanfiction novel for a global English-speaking readership. During the discussions the participants creatively mixed different linguistic and cultural resources. They also positioned themselves as mediators between two readerships, which pushed them to reflect on literary and philosophical traditions of the Russian and English-speaking cultures and engage in transcultural literacies.

В данной статье мы проводим анализ транскультурной коммуникации и грамотности в контексте фэндома на примере любительского перевода фанфика с русского на английский. Основываясь на методологии цифровой этнографии, мы провели серию наблюдений за процессом перевода и интервью с ключевыми участниками команды. Транскультурная коммуникация была выявлена в ходе дискуссий участников о том, как следует адаптировать русский фанфик для глобальной англоязычной аудитории. В ходе этих дискуссий участники перевода творчески смешивали различные языковые и культурные коды, а также позиционировали себя в качестве посредников между двумя разными аудиториями, что подтолкнуло их к критическому обсуждению культурных различий русскоязычной и англоязычной аудиторий.

KEYWORDS:

• Transcultural literacies
• translanguaging
• fan translation
• digital ethnography
• cultural differences

KEYWORDS:

• Транскультурная грамотность
• любительский перевод
• цифровая этнография
• культурные различия
• translanguaging

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Liudmila Shafirova is a researcher associated with the Department of Translation and Language Sciences, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain. Her research interests include informal language learning (Russian, English), multilingual computer-mediated interactions, identity building online and transcultural literacies.

Daniel Cassany is a professor at the Department of Translation and Language Sciences, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain. Daniel currently leads the research group GRAEL and a research project ForVid. His current research interests include multiliteracies, online language learning and educational ethnography.

Carme Bach is a Serra Hunter fellow and associate professor at the Translation and Language Sciences Department of Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Her current interests include discourse analysis, transculturality and language learning.

Notes

1 The writing of alternative fictional narratives based around pop culture products.

2 The translation and subsequent audio overdubbing of an audiovisual product.

3 Exact numbers are not provided in the interest of data protection.

4 A platform for collaborative writing, similar to Google Drive.

5 This study was compliant with the guidelines of the International Association of Internet Researchers (Markham & Buchanan, 2012). All the participants were fully informed about the study and signed a participation consent form which explicitly gave their permission to publish direct quotations. Participants’ real names have been replaced with pseudonyms.

6 We have marked the use of different languages and the Latin alphabet with boldface for clarification purposes.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades [grant number Research project ForVid, RT2018-100790-B-100].