Cover not available

Article published In: Babel
Vol. 71:3 (2025) ► pp.307–329

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Feminist paratextual (re)framing of online social translation

A case study of @subtitle girl (@zimu shaonü)

ORCiD logo with link | University of Turku
Published online: 22 November 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.24110.che
Abstract
This study focuses on a range of paratexts around an influential social media account in China named @subtitle girl, who dedicates herself to online feminist content production in the form of (editing) and subtitling feminist clips from English to Chinese. The study aims to identify how the feminist subtitled clips are paratextually (re)framed in the context of digital feminism. The study adopts a suitable theoretical conceptualization of paratextuality and views @subtitle girl’s translational activities under the online social translation/subtitling rubric. Different paratexts around @subtitle girl’s subtitling are examined on the macro and micro level. It is found that, on the macro level, the factual paratextual elements avatar, username, and short bio of @subtitle girl, and algorithm-generated statistics about their subtitling facilitate a (post-)feminist (self-)branding and (self-)promotion of their subtitled work. On the micro level, the hashtagged synopsis for each clip and the comments introduce, highlight, reconstruct, and repackage the subtitled feminist content for the Chinese female audience online. The study shows how the feminist (re)framing on two levels of @subtitle girl’s online social translation/subtitling is fulfilled against the backdrop of digital feminist content production: both the (self-)marketing of the producer/subtitler and the interaction between the producer/subtitler and their AV content consumers and among their consumers are valued.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Digital feminism and translation
  • 3.Online social translation, (digital) paratextuality, and research on feminism and translation paratexts
    • 3.1Theoretical concepts
    • 3.2Paratext and feminism
  • 4.Data and method
  • 5.A Paratextual analysis of @subtitle girl
    • 5.1Factual framing towards a (post-)feminist (self-)branding and (self-)promotion of the subtitled work of @subtitle girl
    • 5.2Co-framing by @subtitle girl and their audience
  • 6.Conclusion and discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (51)
References
Abou Rached, Ruth. 2020. “Pathways of Solidarity in Transit: Iraqi Women Writers’ Story-Making in English Translation.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Feminism and Gender, edited by Luise von Flotow and Hala Kamal, 48–63. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Adami, Elisabetta, and Sara Ramos Pinto. 2020. “Meaning-(Re)Making in a World of Untranslated Signs: Towards a Research Agenda on Multimodality, Culture, and Translation.” In Translation and Multimodality: Beyond Words, edited by Monica Boria, Ángeles Carreres, María Noriega-Sánchez, and Marcus Tomalin, 71–93. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baer, Hester. 2016. “Redoing Feminism: Digital Activism, Body Politics, and Neoliberalism.” Feminist Media Studies 16 (1): 17–34. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, Mona. 2006. Translation, Power and Conflict: A Narrative Account. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Batchelor, Kathryn. 2018. Translation and Paratexts. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2022. “Translation, Media and Paratexts.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Media, edited by Esperança Bielsa, 122–135. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Birke, Dorothee, and Birte Christ. 2013. “Paratext and Digitized Narrative: Mapping the Field.” Narrative 21 (1): 65–87. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Borodo, Michał. 2022. “Non-Professional Translators and the Media.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Media, edited by Esperança Bielsa, 432–445. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Braun, Virginia, and Victoria Clarke. 2013. Successful Qualitative Research. London: Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brookey, Robert, and Jonathan Gray. 2017. “‘Not Merely Para’: Continuing Steps in Paratextual Research.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 34 (2): 101–110. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bucaria, Chiara, and Kathryn Batchelor, eds. 2023. “Media Paratexts and Translation.” Special issue, Translation Studies 16 (3). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cao, Qilin. 2021. “Accommodating Paratextual Theory to Born-Digital Literature Translation: A Case Study of ‘Wuxiaworld.’” Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 8 (2): 148–162. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Castro, Olga, and Emek Ergun, eds. 2017. Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational Perspectives. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chang, Jiang, Hailong Ren, and Qiguang Yang. 2018. “A Virtual Gender Asylum? The Social Media Profile Picture, Young Chinese Women’s Self-Empowerment, and the Emergence of a Chinese Digital Feminism.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 21 (3): 325–340. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chang, Jiang, and Hao Tian. 2020. “Girl Power in Boy Love: Yaoi, Online Female Counterculture, and Digital Feminism in China.” Feminist Media Studies 21 (4): 1–17.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chen, Jiewen, and Hongming Cheng. 2023. “Achieving Postfeminist Ideals: A Study of Chinese Female Wanghongs and Their Self-Framing on Social Media.” Feminist Media Studies. Advance online publication.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dolmaya, Julie McDonough, and María del Mar Sánchez Ramos. 2019. “Characterizing Online Social Translation.” Translation Studies 12 (2): 129–138. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Entman, Robert M. 1993. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43 (4): 51–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ergun, Emek. 2013. “Reconfiguring Translation as Intellectual Activism: The Turkish Feminist Remaking of Virgin: The Untouched History.” Trans-Scripts 31: 264–289.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Faria, Dominique, Marta Pacheco Pinto, and Joana Moura, eds. 2023. Reframing Translators, Translators as Reframers. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Freeth, Peter Jonathan. 2023. “Between Consciously Crafted and the Vastness of Context: Collateral Paratextuality and Its Implications for Translation Studies.” Translation Studies 16 (3): 419–435. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard. 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, translated by Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Geraghty, Lincoln, ed. 2015. Popular Media Cultures: Fans, Audiences and Paratexts. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gerbaudo, Paolo. 2015. “Protest Avatars as Memetic Signifiers: Political Profile Pictures and the Construction of Collective Identity on Social Media in the 2011 Protest Wave.” Information, Communication & Society 18 (8): 916–929. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gill, Rosalind. 2016. “Post-Postfeminism?: New Feminist Visibilities in Postfeminist Times.” Feminist Media Studies 16 (4): 610–630. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Godard, Barbara. 1990. “Theorizing Feminist Discourse/Translation.” In Translation, History and Culture, edited by Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere, 87–96. London: Cassell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gray, Jonathan. 2010. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Han, Xiao. 2021. “Uncovering the Low-Profile #MeToo Movement: Towards a Discursive Politics of Empowerment on Chinese Social Media.” Global Media and China 6 (3): 364–380. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Henry-Tierney, Pauline. 2021. “The Many Faces of Beauvoir: Paratranslated Materiality in Le Deuxième Sexe.” In Translating Feminism: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Text, Place and Agency, edited by Maud Anne Bracke, Julia C. Bullock, Penelope Morris, and Kristina Schulz, 43–65. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hogan, Michael. 2020. “Vicky Jones: ‘Fleabag Felt like a Tipping Point for Feminism.’” The Guardian, 12 April 2020. Accessed 12 August 2023. [URL]
Holzberg, Billy, and Aura Lehtonen. 2022. “The Affective Life of Heterosexuality: Heteropessimism and Postfeminism in Fleabag.” Feminist Media Studies 22 (8): 1902–1917. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jiang, Mengying. 2019. “Female Voices in Translation: An Interrogation of a Dynamic Translation Decade for Contemporary Chinese Women Writers, 1980–1991.” The Translator 25 (1): 1–12. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2023. “Translating the Unspeakable: Activist Translation of Sexuality into Chinese via Social Media.” The Translator 29 (3): 362–377. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kim, Kyung Hye. 2018. “Retranslation as a Socially Engaged Activity: The Case Of The Rape of Nanking.” Perspectives 26 (3): 391–404. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krafft, Erin Katherine, and Caroline De Souza. 2024. “(Another) Introduction: Translating Transnational Feminisms.” Journal of Feminist Scholarship 24 (24): 1–3. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, Sang-Bin. 2020. “Reception and Revision of Women-Related Translation Paratexts: South Korean Cases.” The Translator 26 (2): 176–189. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021. “Translators, Translations, and Paratexts in South Korea’s Gender Conflicts.” Perspectives 29 (1): 1–16. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Linabary, Jasmine R., Danielle J. Corple, and Cheryl Cooky. 2019. “Feminist Activism in Digital Space: Postfeminist Contradictions in #WhyIStayed.” New Media & Society 22 (10): 1827–1848. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munro, Ealasaid. 2013. “Feminism: A Fourth Wave?” Political Insight 4 (2): 22–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Sullivan, Carol. 2018. “‘New and Improved Subtitle Translation’ Representing Translation in Film Paratexts.” In Linguistic and Cultural Representation in Audiovisual Translation, edited by Irene Ranzato and Serenella Zanotti, 265–279. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Patton, Michael Quinn, ed. 2002. Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pruchniewska, Urszula M. 2018. “Branding the Self as an ‘Authentic Feminist’: Negotiating Feminist Values in Post-Feminist Digital Cultural Production.” Feminist Media Studies 18 (5): 810–824. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Qi, Lintao. 2023. “Source Text Readers as Censors in the Digital Age: A Paratextual Examination of the English Translation of Wuhan Diary.” Perspectives 31 (2): 282–296. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rose, Jessica, Susan Mackey-Kallis, Len Shyles, Kelly Barry, Danielle Biagini, Colleen Hart, and Lauren Jack. 2012. “Face It: The Impact of Gender on Social Media Images.” Communication Quarterly 60 (5): 588–607. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sakellariou, Panagiotis. 2020. “Intertextuality.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, 266–270. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tahir-Gürçağlar, Şehnaz. 2002. “What Texts Don’t Tell: The Uses of Paratexts in Translation Research.” In Crosscultural Transgressions. Research Models in Translation Studies 2: Historical and Ideological Issues, edited by Theo Hermans, 44–60. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
von Flotow, Luise. 1991. “Feminist Translation: Contexts, Practices and Theories.” TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction 4 (2): 69–84. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Windels, Kasey, Sara Champlin, Summer Shelton, Yvette Sterbenk, and Maddison Poteet. 2020. “Selling Feminism: How Female Empowerment Campaigns Employ Postfeminist Discourses.” Journal of Advertising 49 (1): 1–16. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yang, Caini. 2023. “A Dozen Women Accuse Another Chinese Literary Figure of Sexual Harassment.” Sixth Tone, 4 May 2023. Accessed 18 August 2023. [URL]
Yin, Yiyi. 2020. “An Emergent Algorithmic Culture: The Data-ization of Online Fandom in China.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 23 (4): 475–492. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue