Social Media Translational Action: Translation Activities by K-Pop Fans in Twitter

Internet application advancement has enabled Korean pop culture (K-Pop) to rapidly spread worldwide. However, technology alone is insufficient in delivering k-pop content to K-Pop fans because of language barriers. Hence, the translator's role is pivotal in decoding these data. Realising this crucial need, fans have acted as translators in interpreting enormous data file that have been improperly translated or unavailable in the original file. This research examined the translation process occurring in Twitter microblogging environment which is rarely analysed among linguistic scholars. the translation style of fan translators was identified, and the translational action involved discussed. K-Pop group, Bangtan Sonyeondan's (BTS) twitter account was selected as the main data source and Korean-English fan translation of the content distributed in the account was collected. The microblogging interface is equipped with the latest technology that supports multimedia data form, resulting in more dynamic translation work which needs to be highlighted in translation studies.