온라인 커뮤니티 크라우드소싱 번역 —비키(Viki)의 참여 자막번역을 중심으로

Abstract

In the digital age, an increasing number of users who have linguistic proficiency, digital literacy, and genre knowledge are participating in translation activities. This trend has unsettled the traditional translation practices. Now, translation is making a transition from something static and sequential to something available in a collaborative system which is user-driven, interactive and ubiquitous. Against this backdrop, this study aims to investigate the following: firstly, to find distinctive characteristics of translation in the digital era drawing on Cronin(2013)’s concept of “wiki translation”, Pym(2003, 2011, 2013)’s study on translation ethics and electronic technology, and O’Hagan and Ashworth(2002)’s study on characteristics of translation in the digital age; secondly, to see how these characteristics are manifested in reality through Viki online translating community. Among many user-generated translation community, Viki online subtitling community is chosen for analysis because it is a new initiative which became hugely successful by combining effective commercial strategies and fandom factors. This case study will show how translation activities in the digital environment evolve.