Fansubbing from Spanish to Chinese: organization, roles and norms in collaborative writing

Composition of the community (own elaboration)

Objective. This paper documents and analyzes how the members of an online community of fansubbers collaborate to subtitle Hispanic series and films in Chinese. In order to understand how this community organizes itself on the Internet to satisfactorily complete such a complex multimodal and multilingual process, the paper focuses on the community members’ roles and chain of production, the virtual spaces in which they work, their self-regulation strategies and the ethical issues they face.

Methodology. The authors used qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis of a corpus composed with the help of netnographic techniques, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation and field notes.

Results. The community was found to have a hierarchical structure, where a small group of managing members coordinated the others, who completed different tasks (e.g., transcription, synchronization, translation) in the overall collaborative project. The community took advantage of existing virtual spaces (e.g., official forums, social networks, online chats) to organize and promote its work and to develop a complete system of self-regulation, from recruitment to further training and evaluation with performance management. The authors conclude that fansubbers are cautious volunteers who make their own rules to protect and legitimize their community, which consists of freelance translators and technicians who are amateurs but who take their work seriously. These volunteers collaborate efficiently on the Internet, maintaining strict quality standards in their subtitling, and are supported by active audiences. Empowered in the digital age, this community is revolutionizing traditional modalities of reading and writing, recreating media products in an original way to meet the emerging needs of viewers

“Translation by fans for fans”: organization and practices in a Spanish-language community of scanlation

Figura 1. Captura de Shiro mentre neteja una pàgina.

Objective: To describe the organization and literacy practices of a Spanish-speaking scanlation community (a group of fans who collaborate on the Internet to scan, translate and distribute mangas) by examining the community members’ roles and activities, the online environments in which they work and the resources they use.

Methodology: The study employed cyberethnographic techniques to create and analyse a database comprising 97 videos of onscreen activity, 32 transcripts of comments drawn from Facebook, blogs, forums and chats, 96 scanned manga chapters and, finally, six semi-structured interviews.

Results: The scanlation community in question assigned its members specific roles (of cleaning, translating, typesetting or correcting) and the members worked in a variety of online environments (email, Facebook, forums and chats). Members interacted to negotiate the development of projects, troubleshoot and exchange knowledge and expertise. Their literacy practices were regulated by the shared culture of scanlation communities as these exist worldwide, evidenced in the existence of a set of ethical standards, a common repertory of tools (translators, dictionaries, inventories of fonts, etc.) and a series of specific, socially valued semiotic practices (such as maintaining Japanese honorific suffixes in translations). This sophisticated level of organization challenges the notion that the cultural products of these vernacular and plurilingual practices are merely the result of their individual members’ creativity or of the spontaneous collaboration between them.

Preferences for course delivery in library and information science programs: a study of master’s students in Canada and the United States

Table 2. Delivery Preferences for LIS Core Content Areas (n=891)

Objectives: This paper reports on Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) students’ preferences for course delivery (online, blended or face-to-face) and how their preferences differ based on demographic variables. This research is part of a bi-national study that investigated the motivations and experiences that MLIS students had with online education, while completing their graduate degree in an American Library Association (ALA)-accredited institution.

Methodology: The study used an online survey to gather data from Master’s degree students enrolled in LIS programs accredited by ALA, a professional association which accredits programs in the US, Puerto Rico, and Canada. The online questionnaire was administered with the assistance of the administration and their student associations of LIS programs. Thirty-six programs from Canada and the US were represented by the 1,038 students who responded to the online survey. Respondents who had taken and completed at least one online course constituted the sample (n=910) that was used for analysis and the reporting of the results.
— Results: The findings show that there were five statistically significant indicators associated with preferred instructional delivery for MLIS core courses: age (generational cohort), employment status, metro status, commute distance, and program modality. The results show that younger students who had part-time employment, resided in urban areas, and lived closer to the campus showed greater preference for a course delivery mode that required some form of in-person instruction (face-to-face or blended) than their older peers who had full-time employment, resided in rural areas, and lived farther from campus.

Eugene Garfield: innovator of the bibliographic control and entrepreneur with a cause*

  [Versió catalana] Cristóbal Urbano Faculty of Library and Information Science Universitat of Barcelona urbano@ub.edu     * Laudation delivered by Cristóbal Urbano, lecturer at the Faculty of Library and Information Science, during the ceremony in which Eugene Garfield was awarded the University of Barcelona’s honorary degree the Doctor honoris causa, on 14 June 2016 … Read more

“Participating in what? And for whose benefit?”. Notes on collective participation and creation

  [Versió catalana] [Versión castellana] Antoni Roig Lecturer Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences Universitat Oberta de Catalunya aroigt@uoc.edu     As the title of an essay written in response to Martin Butler’s discussion of the “precarious alliances” that constitute participatory cultures, cultural theorist Henry Jenkins’s pithy “Participation? It’s Complicated” (Jenkins, 2015) makes the situation … Read more

Issue 37 (December 2016)

  Tribune The evolution of the Web of Science from the Science Citation Index || Eugene Garfield Eugene Garfield: innovator of the bibliographic control and entrepreneur with a cause || Cristóbal Urbano “Participating in what? And for whose benefit?”. Notes on collective participation and creation || Antoni Roig Articles “Translation by fans for fans”: organization … Read more

The evolution of the Web of Science from the Science Citation Index

  [Versió catalana] [Versión castellana] Eugene Garfield Doctor Honoris Causa Universitat de Barcelona eugene.garfield@thomsonreuters.com     A month ago, I was informed by Professor Ernest Abadal that I should prepare a brief comment for this occasion. Since I was not told what subject to address, I assumed that it would be relevant to discuss the … Read more