lost in translation

As a rabid purveyor of pop culture who has a mild fear of interpersonal interaction, online fandom is something that I find particularly compelling. Because I am, I admit, absolutely the sort of person to fall head-first into a fictional narrative, and I understand the feeling of never wanting to leave.

I should note that I was a huge Star Trek, Buffy, and X-Files fan back in the day. And with regard to the latter, thank God I started watching it before I had real Internet access, because I was (this is so embarrassing) a Troi/Riker shipper. I even purchased this book. And read it multiple times.

Had I known what fanfiction was when I started watching TNG, I can pretty much guarantee that I would’ve started writing it. And once you dip your toe into that water, it’s hard not to get swept up like Virginia Woolf on a really bad day.

I’m also interested in the more academic questions related to fandom – like why is it, for instance, that Newsies has a huge online presence? There are over 5,000 Newsies fics on fanfiction.net, more than any other movies save Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, and X-Men. Which, really: what the fuck. I mean, I love Christian Bale as much as the next girl, but … singing paperboys? Really?

But whatever you might think about fanfiction as a product or a pastime, there’s little doubt that fanfiction communities are, more and more, proving to be an unexpectedly successful training ground for new writers – and, I’m realizing, language-learners.

While searching for resources on the subject of world fan culture (running the potentially terrifying Google search “fanfiction in translation” – which did indeed return a Stargate SG-1 fic), I was directed to Confessions of an Aca-Fan, the blog of Henry Jenkins, the co-founder of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program. About three months ago he posted some really amazing stuff on Internet fandom and translation that was written by Ksenia Prassolova, a Russian scholar who spent a Fulbright year at MIT working on the Harry Potter fandom.

One of the most interesting parts of the piece for me (and for anyone looking to promote language study) relates to fan-driven translation projects in Russia.

She writes:

“… fandom was eagerly looking for flaws in official versions and engaging in translation projects of their own. Inspired by Maria Spivak, the 'People's Translation Project', high regard for translators in our country and the nagging 'I can do that, too' feeling, fans started to create both individual (Fleur, Yuri Machkasov) and collective (Snitch, The Phoenix Team, Harry-Hermione.net, HP Christmas Forum) translation projects, and by the time Half-blood Prince was released in Russia in December 2005, there had already been nine (sic!) independent translations on the Web, some of them completed not a week after the July 16 release of the English version.”

Read the first part here; the second can be found here.

I often recommend reading or watching a favorite book or TV show in translation when learning a language because no matter how much you love language, it can get a little dry at times. But if you’re working with something that you enjoy – or even something that you’re borderline obsessed with – you’ll be better able to get through those dry spells. And I can only imagine how painless language study might become were it able to harness the full-fledged obsession of fandom.

And if it means an even greater proliferation of Newsies slashfic, well, that's a price I'm willing to pay. As long as I don't have to read it. (More)