Fansub dreaming on ViKi: 'Don't just watch but help when you are free'

Fan subtitling, or ‘fansubbing’, is a heterogeneous and rapidly growing field of amateur translation exhibiting a number of traits that have so far been overlooked by scholars of audiovisual translation. Current research on fansubbing is broadened by examining this phenomenon beyond the strictures of anime subculture alone, drawing on the counter example of Internet start-up company ViKi and exploring the gaps in mainstream subtitling that fansubbing both exposes and fills. The team of volunteer translators working for ViKi re-animates notions of global diversity by capitalizing on the affordances of new technologies and collective intelligence to break down the national and linguistic hierarchies that dominate contemporary media and professional audiovisual translation. Despite a largely conservative ‘look and feel’ and signs of increasing commercialization, ViKi’s fansubbing model makes an important contribution to the internationalization of audiovisual translation practices, bringing programs from small-language communities to diverse audiences across the globe. The paper further considers the extent to which the legalization of ViKi’s fansubbing activity empowers fans to bring about real change in the media marketplace.