[HA for DROKU] FYI: The Fan-subbing Community

Enter the world of fan-subbing, where small communities work together in an assembly-line of sorts, to produce videos that have English, Portuguese, Arabic or any other kind of subtitle for movies and TV shows that we – the fans – could not otherwise watch.   These small pockets of society have their own interests, their own language, their own rules and culture.

It’s a mysterious world for any monolingual movie-watcher who has sworn off foreign films, or for frustrated fans that settle for watching their favorite K-Pop band or Taiwanese television drama in complete oblivion.

But as the world gets smaller and entertainment lovers become more globally aware and connected, fan-subbing may play an important part in our ability to enjoy music, television and culture on an international level.

HOW FANSUBBING STARTED

According to Wikipedia, “a fan-sub (short for fan-subtitled) is a version of a foreign film or foreign television program which has been translated by fans and subtitled into a language other than that of the original.”

Fansubs began to surface during the 1980s when Japanese animation (anime) became a cultural craze. With the limited technology of that decade, fan-subbing was expensive and difficult to come by.  But the turn of the millennium produced rapid advances in technology and accelerated the growth of free fansubs.

Following the anime craze, the early 2000s brought with it the Hallyu, or Korean, wave, most notably the high demand of Korean TV dramas.   With the assistance of YouTube and other video hosting sites, clips of not only Korean TV dramas, but also Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian TV dramas spread throughout the world.

Language, however, proved to be a barrier and limited the potential of the Hallyu wave and other Asian-produced entertainment. That’s where the fans jumped in. Groups of fans, with little regard for geographic location, began to ban together and form “subbing teams.”

Why would random fans decide to join together and voluntarily subtitle videos?

“I wanted to help people read and understand videos,” explains Jonathan Lee, a timer from Soshi Subs, fan-subbing team for Korean pop girl group Girls’ Generation.

“If people do not want to watch [videos] because there are no subtitles, then I’ll take away that reason and provide subs for them,” he says.

THE GROWTH OF FAN-SUBBING

What was once limited to anime and the Hallyu wave eventually spread to other parts of the globe and divided into more specific niche communities.  Pretty soon fan-subbing teams formed to help fans enjoy everything from Chinese serials to Hong Kong soap operas to Korean variety shows.

There are even fan-subbing teams – like Ramen Soup Subs – that specialize in subbing variety shows. There are even teams who only sub videos related to a specific artist, such as Soshi Subs and Aff(x)tionate Subs, focusing solely on Girls’ Generation and f(x), respectively.

Subtitling is not an easy task and fans often take the hard work of fan-subbers for granted. Nelson Arciaga, an editor who has been with Soshi Subs for more than a year, says that his first subbing experience started like a roller coaster, with many ups and downs.

An episode of a drama or show goes through five basic steps: translating, timing, editing, quality checking/encoding, and releasing. And each of these steps take way more than the 30 minutes or hour it takes to watch a finished fan-sub; each part of the procedure may take as little as an hour or as long as a couple of days to perform and complete.
There are also “terms and conditions” to which people must agree before downloading the subtitles. For example, many of the soap operas fan-subbing teams do not allow their subtitles to be hardsubbed, where the subtitles are a permanent part of the videos. Streaming, public sharing on other websites (besides their own) and use of subtitles for commercial purposes is also often forbidden.

These rules are designed to ensure that everybody has the opportunity to enjoy the luxury of subtitles for free. They also prevent other people from taking the fan-subs and claiming credit that belongs to the volunteers who put in long hours for each project.

However, many controversies have arisen because of the pervasive presence of fansubbing.   The biggest issue is copyrights.  Movies, shows, and music all have copyright laws protecting them.  The question is: does fan-subtitling violate those laws?

In order for a fansubbed video to be considered legal, it needs to follow the copyright laws, which state, “the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes.”
The companies that hire professionals to add subtitles to their movies and shows claim that putting up free fan subs affect the profit they should be making from their production.  To the general public, fan-subbing is considered illegal.
Supporters of fan-subbing maintain, however, that only the distribution of videos violates the copyright laws. In their eyes, the distribution of fansubs is actually legal as long as no videos are distributed in the process.

WHY FAN-SUB?

Considering how much time is put into subbing videos, it’s odd that most fan-subbers say being a part of a fan-subbing team does not cut into their social lives.  It may, on the other hand, cut into their sleeping hours.  Lee says he learned to prioritize things.

“Being a timer has become almost like a real job, but unlike a real job, I’m able to take breaks whenever I want to, and put it off until the next day if needed,” says Cypress Dauz.

“Subbing has become a part of me,” says Arciaga, “so if I were to stop, I think that I would feel like a part of me would be missing.”

Another common factor between these fan-subbers is that many say they enjoy the new friendships and online communities they’ve built through fan-subbing.  And of course, between staff members and fans, there exists an invisible thread of trust.

Knowing that fans trust fan-subbing teams to produce high-quality subtitles and are eagerly waiting for their released is what motivates fan-subbers like Arciaga, Dauz and Lee to continue their involvement in the fan-subbing community, despite the long hours.

“It’s wonderful to hear back, to know that people are watching our hard work,” says Lee.

“The fans,” he says, are what keep him motivated to be a part of such a highly integrated and cooperative team.
“Without subbers, there would always be that language barrier between us and our idols and favorite dramas,” Adds Renée, a Korean drama and K-pop fan.

“I probably lost more sleep hours than I did during school,” says Dauz, “but it’s worth it.”

1.  Translators have the most difficult job, listening to every single word on the clip and interpreting both words and meaning, from one language to another. They work without the original scripts or the dialogues and have to patiently listen to them over and over. Plus, there are many instances of overlapping dialogues and screen texts.
2. Timers match everything that the translators transcribe with the exact moment they are spoken or appear in the video, up to the millisecond sometimes. Dauz, a timer who has been with Soshi Subs for a year, says she puts in about twenty to forty hours a week to time videos – practically a part-time or full-time job, depending on which projects she’s working on.
3. Editors check for grammar and syntax in the translations. Arciaga only puts in two to four hours a week editing videos. According to him, his experience with editing and the Korean language have helped him become more efficient at his task.
4. Encoders probably have the most dead weight hours waiting for the videos to finish encoding. Simply put, it takes a while. The hours that a video spent at each step may vary, but subbers often work on multiple projects at a time.
5. Uploaders have the final task of taking the completed fansubs (videos and subtitles) and uploading them to various file hosting sites and releasing the download links to the public.