Taboo Language in Non-Professional Subtitling on Bilibili.com: A Corpus-Based Study

Abstract

This qualitative and quantitative study examines how taboo language is rendered in non-professional subtitling (NPS), how viewers react to the renderings, and how the interactions between danmu and general comments’ contributors affect the translation activities and language changes. The study draws on a parallel corpus consisting of taboo language and its translations from 18 of the most-viewed and commented upon subtitled videos on the popular video-sharing platform, Bilibili.com. Danmu comments and general comments related to the renderings of taboo language are also collected and studied. When analyzing translation activities in an NPS setting, the study adopts and modifies some mainstream subtitling strategies and techniques proposed by. The study finds that various creative approaches are adopted, such as lexical recreation and substitution by euphemism. While the strength of the taboo language is reduced in more than half of the instances, in an unexpected 17.2% of cases the effects are enlarged. The study concludes that a virtuous, collaborative mechanism for potential translation problems and language learning is formed by providing positive, neutral, and critical feedback in the comments. In addition to linguistic knowledge and cultural background, viewers also share knowledge beyond the scope of translation.