Yu, Chuan (2022). Online Collaborative Translation in China and Beyond: Community, Practice, and Identity. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 181, £ 96. ISBN 9780367904043 (hbk).
Focusing on the digital media ecology in China, Online Collaborative Translation in China and Beyond: Community, Practice, and Identity, by Chuan Yu, makes a valuable contribution to the increasingly influential phenomenon of collaborative translation. It is “human-centred collaborative translation” rather than “machine-centred collaborative translation” that this book focuses on, given that the author investigates the “interactions between human actors and examines how human translators produce texts in collaboration” (3). The approach — digital ethnographic fieldwork — that Yu adopts in this research is in line with recent trends within online translation studies that are characterised by the frequent use of an immersive, prolonged, and reflexive ethnographic methodology with a focus on the increasingly participatory and interactive nature of the Internet (Li 2017; Lu and Lu 2022a).
Along the lines of the “socio-cultural turn” described by Díaz Cintas (2018), and adopting an anthropologically-informed ethnographic methodology, Yu explores how ordinary citizens involve in complex translation practices, and how they build their communities, working practices, and identities in Yeeyan and other online translation platforms (e.g. Cenci, ECOCN, TED Open Translation Project and Wikipedia). The processes of collaboration and interaction of online translation activities are theorised at three levels: at a textual level, in which tasks including the selection, translation, and edition of translation drafts among translators and among translators and commenters are explored; at the level of translation process, in which factors influencing the (re)production and circulation of target texts are addressed; and lastly, at reception level, which enhances our understanding of the translators’ own thoughts and opinions on their shared online translation communities.
As a starting point, in the first chapter, Yu produces a MetaMap to categorise phenomena related to collaborative translation. With a focus on human-centred collaborative translation, the author classifies collaborative translation into two levels with two sub-categories and four further sub-categories within these, which are established according to the number of translators and the actors involved in the translation process. This rigorous categorisation provides a clear visual picture of what Yu’s current work focuses on and serves as a useful tool for researchers to better conceptualise this complex field. After systematising a vast array of interrelated terms featuring collaborative practices (e.g. ‘user-generated translation’, ‘crowdsourcing translation’, ‘wiki-translation’, ‘community translation’, ‘volunteer translation’, and ‘fan translation’), Yu moves on to characterise online collaborative translation as an overarching term associated with traits such as an important role in community building processes, a voluntary nature, and the fluidity of participation in a cyclical procedure where there is a mix of professional and non-professional translators.
With the purpose of situating online collaborative translation at the crossroads of three complementary fields of study addressing the Chinese internet, participatory culture and translation, the second chapter first outlines the development of participatory and convergence culture in China’s online mediascape and then pays attention to several online translation practices (e.g. fansubbing) emerged in such a ‘carnivalistic’ environment (21). Yu argues that China’s encounter with the global media convergence in the postsocialist era is “full of contradictions, contestations and tensions” (25) inasmuch as it negotiates creativity, diversity, and state regulations. Such a complex environment with Chinese characteristics has attracted increasing scholarly attention. This is evident in the surge of research on China’s online cultures in recent years, which has focused particularly on exploring the sociocultural implications of newly-emerged online translation practices (Guo and Evans 2020; Lu and Lu 2021; Pérez-González 2020; Yang 2021; Wang 2022).
In the third chapter, by drawing on Wenger’s previous work (1998 and 2010), Yu discusses the concept of ‘community of practice’ (CoP), which is central to the overarching theoretical framework that this study sets up to explore collaborative translation in the context of Yeeyan. Through conceptualising Yeeyan as an online translation community by referring to Wenger’s (1998, 52) “duality of participation and reification”, Yu proposes a taxonomy distinguishing three dimensions: “practice/mutual engagement”, including ‘mutual recognition’ (i.e. members mutually recognise each other); ‘shared repertoire’ (i.e. resources used and developed in a collective way), and ‘joint enterprise’ (i.e. goals, interests and objectives defined and negotiated in a joint way) (47). These three interrelated dimensions provide the conceptual basis for analysing the negotiations and interactions among translators and how they perform different social roles in Yeeyan’s collaborative environment, which are presented in the next chapters.
Following this same theoretical line, the fourth chapter examines online translation communities as both a narrative community and a community of practice within the complex context of the Chinese internet (outlined in the second chapter). As an example, the chapter develops an interesting analysis of two online translation initiatives, Yeeyan and Cenci Journalism Project, which are framed as forms of citizen media practices. By analysing archival data (e.g. media reports, social media pages, and the author’s own fieldnotes) at a textual level, the author argues that citizen translators participate in the creation and negotiation of social reality not only through conventional translation activities (e.g. the selection and translation of the source text), but also by undertaking some peripheral translation-related tasks (e.g. commenting and circulating media products through translation). The detailed textual analysis of the two platforms from a socio-narrative theoretical perspective offers solid insights into the process of meaning negotiation among members in online translation communities and into the way online collaborative translation practice can be considered “a narrative community within a community of practice” (81).
The fifth chapter focuses on the actual process and the various roles that community members play when they engage in such shared practices within online translation communities. Based on abundant data collected from ethnographic fieldwork in Yeeyan, Yu traces the development trajectory of this community against China’s sociopolitical ecology and exemplifies how its layered structure, in which both parallel and hierarchical types of participation among the community members are embedded, works in Yeeyan. As the author shows, parallel participation implies not only members’ equal engagement in community activities, but also non-hierarchical relationships between different channels and sub-communities. Yu also explains that hierarchical participation can be seen in at least three aspects: the stratified relationships among new and senior members, the differences in the level of involvement of community members, and divergences in the institutional status of both translators and the translated text. It is argued that the collaborative practices in this convergent environment influence the different roles (e.g. local and negotiated identity roles) that members play, and that it is during this process that mutual recognition and certain types of relationships are established (95).
The sixth chapter further expands on the implications of online collaborative translation practices by concentrating on its educational and pedagogical aspects. Taking as a reference the theories of Lave and Wenger (1991), Yu uses examples from Yeeyan to demonstrate how its processes of collaborative translation (e.g. learning as participation, learning as production, learning as being) reflect the dynamics of situated learning embedded in the community. By exploring the factors that motivate members to participate in both conventional and peripheral translation activities, Yu highlights the significance of acquiring non-translatorial skills in the community, and explores its potential implications for supplementing classroom learning and translator training.
Due to the increasing visibility and popularity of user-generated content, the once dichotomous distinction between professional and non-professional translation has been much discussed and debated among scholars in recent years (Grbić and Kujamäki 2018; Lu and Lu 2022b). This is also the discussion focus of the seventh chapter. Through an in-depth investigation into twelve Yeeyan members’ identities (which pays attention to their occupational and disciplinary backgrounds, among other factors) and into various community rules, Yu explores how this production and circulation of knowledge which is enabled by seemingly untrained, voluntary, and unrecognised non-professional translators is entangled with members’ professional identities. By showing the increasingly blurred boundaries between ‘professional’ and ‘non-professional translation’ in Yeeyan, the author suggests that translation, especially in the digital age, needs to be considered as “a dynamic process through which both professionals and non-professionals collaborate, negotiate and recognise each other through their mutual engagement” (142). The once canonical and conventional understanding of professionalism in translation studies is thus challenged further.
Finally, the last chapter summarises the main arguments of the book and stresses the dynamic nature of the processes in Yeeyan and other online translation platforms identified through immersive digital ethnographic fieldwork. The author places special emphasis on the importance of looking at three “interwoven and equally important” dimensions – community, practice, and identity – when analysing online collaborative translation (150). This concluding chapter also points to the future direction of collaborative translation at a time when human-to-machine collaborative translation is bound to gain ground, given the fast-growing development of digital technologies.
This work fills a gap that had been highlighted by academic authors (Baker et al. 2020; Cadwell, Federici and O’Brien 2022) and can be seen as a contribution to research trends embracing the “socio-cultural turn” (Díaz Cintas, 2018) that is taking place in our discipline as the traditional mechanisms enabling the production and circulation of information are experiencing a radical transformation in our societies. Although the book mainly tackles issues related to the practices and identities of online translation communities with Chinese characteristics, it also situates discussion on online collaborative translation within the complex context of a global participatory culture marked by media convergence. One particularly interesting theoretical contribution of this work to the field of translation studies is that it shows how social learning theories – those enabling research into a community of practice in which the dimensions of ‘joint enterprise’, ‘mutual recognition’ and ‘shared repertoire’ can be distinguished (Wenger, 1998 and 2010) — can be adapted to translation research in the digital space and how it can be combined with other compatible theories (e.g. complexity theory, Bourdieu’s insights, practice theory, actor-network theory) to explore both translators’ and interpreters’ as well as non-human actors’ practices and networks in varied forms. This necessarily interdisciplinary approach advocated by Yu can also be adopted to analyse other social phenomena beyond China in future research, as well as to compare collaborative translation (at the level of practice, training, and theorical conceptualisation) in China with that occurring in other geographical contexts.
The book also makes a relevant contribution to the subfield of audiovisual translation (AVT) by pointing out new directions of research which are particularly timely in a context in which digital technologies continue to transform our society. It shows the urgent need to situate AVT research in the interdisciplinary crossroads of translation studies and media studies (particularly digital media studies) in order to emphasise the social and political significance of translation in today’s digital mediascape. Through exploring the impact of online translation amateurism in China’s digital media ecology and beyond, it also contributes to expanding AVT research beyond Eurocentric and Western contexts and to strengthening scholarly exchanges between Asian and Western contexts. This is certainly vital in order to complete the picture of AVT in the global digital ecosystem.
It could be argued that the sixth chapter, which focuses on situated learning, seems to slightly break the logical and structural flow of the discussion on the three dimensions (communities, practices, and identities) explored in the book. All in all, the book is of great interest to readers ranging from early-stage scholars to more advanced researchers working in the fields of translation studies (particularly audiovisual translation studies), digital media studies, intercultural studies, and sociology.
References
- Baker, Mona et al. (2020). “Introduction.” Mona Baker et al. (eds) (2020). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media. London/New York: Routledge, xxi–xxvi.
- Cadwell, Patrick, Federico Federici and Sharon O'Brien (2022). “Communities of practice and translation: An introduction.” The Journal of Specialised Translation 37, 1–14.
- Díaz Cintas, Jorge (2018). “Subtitling’s a Carnival: New practices in cyberspace.” The Journal of Specialised Translation 30, 127–149.
- Grbić, Nadja and Pekka Kujamäki (2018). “Professional vs Non-Professional?: How boundary work shapes research agendas in translation and interpreting studies.” Helle V. Dam, Matilde Nisbeth Brøgger and Karen Korning Zethsen (eds) (2018). Moving Boundaries in Translation Studies. London/New York: Routledge, 113-131.
- Guo, Ting and Jonathan Evans (2020). “Translational and Transnational Queer Fandom in China: The Fansubbing of Carol.” Feminist Media Studies 20(4), 515–529.
- Lave, Jean and Étienne Wenger (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Li, Dang (2017). “A Netnography Approach to Amateur Subtitling Networks.” David Orrego-Carmona and Yvonne Lee (eds) (2017). Non-professional Subtitling. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 37–62.
- Lu, Siwen and Sijing Lu (2021). “Understanding Intervention in Fansubbing’s Participatory Culture: A multimodal study on Chinese official subtitles and fansubs.” Babel: International Journal of Translation 67(5), 620–645.
- Lu, Siwen and Sijing Lu (2022a). “Methodological Concerns in Online Translation Community Research: A reflexive netnography on translator’s communal habitus.” Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice 30 (4), 695–710.
- Lu, Siwen and Sijing Lu (2022b). “A Postmodern Analysis of Intralingual Subtitles in China’s Web-Only Variety Shows: A Case of Mars Intelligence Agency.” International Journal of Communication 16, 1239–1259.
- Pérez-González, Luis (2020). “From the ‘Cinema of Attractions’ to Danmu: A Multimodal Theory Analysis of Changing Subtitling Aesthetics across Media Cultures.” Monica Boria et al. (eds) (2020). London/New York: Routledge, 94–116.
- Wang, Dingkun (2022). “Chinese Translational Fandoms: Transgressing the distributive agency of assemblages in audiovisual media.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 25(6), 655–672.
- Wenger, Étienne (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Wenger, Étienne (2010). “Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems: The Career of a Concept.” Chris Blackmore (ed.) (2010). Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice. London: Springer, 179–198.
- Yang, Yuhong (2021). “Danmaku Subtitling: An exploratory study of a new grassroots translation practice on Chinese video-sharing websites.” Translation Studies 14(1), 1-17.
Siwen Lu
University of Bristol
Email: siwen.lu1016@gmail.com