The Reader’s Visibility: Analyzing Reader’s Intervention in Fan-based Translation on Wuxiaworld

Abstract

Chinese Internet literature has become a unique literary phenomenon after more than twenty years of development since the late 1990s as a result of the remarkable progress of the Internet. According to the 2020 Blue Book of Chinese Internet Literature released by the China Writers Association on June 2, 2021, about two million Internet literary works were contracted to release in 2020, and cumulatively there had been about twenty-eight million online literary works in China by the end of the same year. In addition, the numbers of Chinese words updated daily and throughout the year 2020 exceeded one hundred fifty million and fifty billion, respectively, attracting a considerable readership of four hundred sixty-seven million in 2020 alone. Chinese Internet literature, mainly that on the theme of wuxia (武侠), xianxia (仙侠), and xuanhuan (玄幻), has gone global through fan-based translation, an emerging form of translation undertaken by fan communities. It has fascinated millions of English-speaking readers quickly and extended its influence over nearly the whole world since it first became widely popular in North America in 2015, and the readership is still growing. Undeniably, online platforms represented by Wuxiaworld that focus on translating Chinese Internet literature into English have played an essential role. However, a minimal amount of attention has been paid to the fan-based translation of Chinese Internet literature because, according to Cornelia Zwischenberger, such a translation form is relatively young in translation studies. This article first introduces Chinese Internet literature and the concept of fan-based translation. Then, it elaborates on readers’ multiple roles in fan-based translation of Wuxiaworld by the Internet-mediated approach and conducts a case study of readers’ roles in traditional translations of print publications. It concludes that readers have long been invisible in translation studies, especially in the print age, which, to some degree, led to some translated literary works not being well accepted by the target audience. Thanks to media shifts based on technological progress, readers have become visible in the new form of online fan-based translation, intervening in the workflow by playing different roles.