关于字幕组的前世今生
It was a feat of shrewd initiative, exacting standards and streamlined efficiency that won millions of Chinese fans for Francis Underwood, the scheming politician played by Kevin Spacey in the hit US drama House of Cards.Within just two hours of the February 14 release of the show's second season on Netflix, a pirated version of the first episode was available as a free download for Chinese viewers.
But this was no run-of-the-mill pirate video. Thanks to a highly organised group of volunteers belonging to a "fansub" or fan-made subtitles group on the mainland, this version included Chinese translations that rendered Frank's pearls of political wisdom comprehensible even to viewers who lacked the ability to decipher his trademark southern drawl.
"If the drama is really popular, our members in the States will start sorting out the English subtitles while the new episode is still streaming, and send them to the English-to-Chinese translators when the closing credits start rolling," Queenie Zhang, a fansub volunteer, said.
Zhang is one of the thousands of unpaid translators helping to bring foreign television shows and films to millions of Chinese viewers who would otherwise struggle to comprehend the programmes. Yet their future is in jeopardy as they become the latest target in a crackdown on online piracy by the mainland's media watchdog.
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Illustration: Henry Wong
Late last month, the National Copyright Administration suspended the website of one of the largest fansub groups, YYeTs, and blocked several of its servers.
At around the same time, Shooter
a popular portal that collects and provides subtitles - but does not host pirate videos - was also forced to shut down.
The move has sparked criticism among fans, translators and watchers alike, but also among commentators who cite it as yet another move to restrict foreign content.
"The question of who owns the copyright of the Chinese subtitles I have made has never occurred to me," said Zhang, who joined the group four years ago when she started university. She has translated more than 15 US series, including such drama and reality shows as Crime Scene Investigation, Bones and Survivor.
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'Fansub' groups emerged around the time of US sitcom Friends. Image: Reuters
"I'm just happy to see my works shared by all, for free. That's why I have spent that much time on translation."
It can take hours to translate one 40-minute episode. What the translators call "raw meat" - pirated videos featuring English subtitles - usually come from video sharing sites based overseas.
Within half an hour of an episode airing on television, the team leader in charge of the show divides the English subtitles into three to four parts and splits the work between translators, each of whom has about two hours to complete their task.
It is a tightly run production line: an editor meticulously goes through the Chinese translation for accuracy and consistency of style between translators. The IT team then embeds both English and Chinese subtitles into the video and uploads the "cooked meat" online.
The country's fansub communities emerged more than a decade ago when American sitcom series Friends became a hit in the pirated VCD market.
Set up mostly by university students overseas, the fansub groups have over the years attracted legions of volunteer translators keen on foreign popular culture.
Today, there more than 10 groups that boast millions of users specialising in various languages such as English, Thai, Korean and Japanese. Larger groups have up to 300 translators, usually students, who work on as many as 15 episodes a month.
"When I first joined, I spent most of my spare time in the library and translated one part of a new episode every other day," Zhang said. "It made my hall mates concerned over why I had seemed to disappear for a whole semester."
Translators might work for free but the competition to be one is intense. Standards are high. Aspiring translators must pass tests designed by senior members before they are admitted into their hallowed company. Some groups fire members who make more than five translation mistakes in one episode.
So, what drives them to do it? Many started out as diehard fans of foreign serial dramas eager to be the first on the mainland to watch the latest episode.
"I was a fan of Vanished. It's not popular in mainland China and it took days to find the subtitles. So I thought why not join a fansub group and help," said Tristin, who joined the IT team of YDY, one of the oldest and largest fansub groups, in 2006.
Vanished was pulled by its creator Fox the week she joined the group, but Tristin, then a second-year student, stayed for a further six months until increasing schoolwork meant she no longer had time for her hobby.
"I was thrilled to see my pen name in the subtitles. And I enjoyed being with a group of people who were willing to contribute to a drama that we all liked," she said.
As with most of the other followers, she relies on the groups for foreign content that "otherwise would not have been available in mainland China".
"These resources are a window to another culture and its mainstream values. Foreign TV dramas cannot reflect the whole picture of life in another country, but they motivate me to learn more about other parts of the world," said Tristin, who did a master's degree in cultural studies after leaving the fansub group.
That's why when the National Copyright Administration suspended YYeTs late last month, thousands of microbloggers were up in arms, condemning the intervention as censorship and ideological control.
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A recent crackdown has taken some series, including The Big Bang Theory, offline. Image: Reuters
Yan Feng, a Chinese literature professor from Fudan University, said on Weibo that fansub groups were part of a translation movement that had as much influence on Chinese culture as the systematic translation of Western liberal arts classics, done by the large publishing houses, after the Cultural Revolution.
But whatever the good intentions of fansub groups, they are guilty of piracy, copyright lawyers say.
The Motion Picture Association of America last year accused China and several other countries of distributing pirated films and dramas. It singled out YYeTs in particular as "providing unauthorised Chinese subtitles".
Chinese authorities responded by encouraging video sites to team up officially with foreign TV channels and stream their shows online.
The idea proved a success, with popular sites like Sohu hiring amateur translators from fansub groups to produce quality, authorised subtitles.
But it was not long before the Chinese authorities began imposing tighter regulations.
The first sign the net was tightening came in late April this year, when four series, including the popular The Big Bang Theory, vanished suddenly from Chinese sites that had paid a fortune for the copyright.
Then, in late July, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued requirements for video sharing websites to censor the content uploaded by their users. It also ordered the sites to institute a "real name" policy for the uploaders.
From next year, mainland media have reported, the sites must submit all episodes to the administration before they can be streamed online.
Ostensibly, the tightening measures are to purge "unhealthy" content online, but commentators decry them as a way to stave off the growing influence of Western values that run counter to what officialdom supports.
What it does mean though is that fans will have to wait far longer than the two hours it took the fansub groups to turn around the season two premiere of House of Cards.
"If people have to wait until a season ends to watch its first episode, they will be driven back to fansub groups," Zhang said.
Chinese dramas were not an attractive alternative, she added. Otherwise, demand for the translators' works would not have been so strong. "They are copying the plots of foreign dramas aired a decade ago. If you are a fan of Friends and How I Met Your Mother, you will find most episodes of IPartment familiar."
But, fans of the fansubs can take some solace. As Zhang said: "It's impossible to close down all of us."
Indeed, over the years, the fansub community has become increasingly decentralised. Translators get together temporarily to work on one show, disbanding when the season ends and forming a new group with a different set of translators when a new show starts.
Even so, some fansub veterans such as Tristin feel beaten. They fear the closure of YYeTs and Shooter
has brought "the end of an era".
"When I joined the YDY fansub group in 2006, I could see and learn so much on the internet that it felt like the world was indeed flat," Tristin said.
"Then Facebook and Twitter were blocked, and more and more sites like Shooter
were taken away from us.
"Now I think I was being too optimistic about the future."
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