科研成果详情

This chapter examines danmu subtitling as a form of multimodal and interactive subtitling afforded by danmu commenting technology, a “live” commenting technology that allows its users to post comments on the screen of the video in a range of colours and fonts in either moving or static modes. It adopts concepts and methods from digital conversation analysis and multimodal discourse analysis to examine the interaction among danmu users revolving around translation issues arising in watching and understanding “raw meat”, a term that refers to untranslated videos on Bilibili. The data consist of over 8,000 danmu subtitles and comments posted on the screen of three English “raw meat” uploaded to Bilibili. The analysis examines how wild subtitlers and the audience engaged in different forms of interactional exchanges and maintained coherence on the visually chaotic interface by mobilizing the technological and multi-semiotic resources of the platform in understanding and translating raw videos. This chapter contributes to the growing research of subtitling and translation in digital space characterized by multimodality and interactivity. It also provides methodological implications for examining emerging forms of subtitling and interaction in Chinese social media.