Iva Krombholzová 2018 Masarykova univerzita

Filozofická fakulta

Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky

Magisterská diplomová práce

2018 Iva Krombholzová

Hřbet

Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Iva Krombholzová

Czech and Slovak Fanfiction Translation: The Social Dimension

Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Renata Kamenická, Ph.D.

2018

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

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Author’s signature

I would like to thank Markéta Pytlíková for sharing her knowledge in matters related to fanfiction, Věra Ježková for her time and kindness and especially to my supervisor,

Mgr. Renata Kamenická, Ph.D., for all the help, patience and feedback. Special thanks to everyone who responded to or helped distribute the questionnaire.

Table of Contents

Obsah

1. Introduction: Why fanfiction translation? 8

1.1 Methodology and structure 10

2. Theoretical part 12

2.1 What is fanfiction translation? 12

2.2 Brief historical overview 17

3. Main part 20

3.1 Czech fanfiction and fanfiction translation before and around 2000 20

3.2 Czech fanfiction and fanfiction translation after 2000 31

3.3 Questionnaire analysis 44

Conclusion 86

References 88

Summary 95

Resumé 96

Appendix – old Star Trek fanzine covers 98

1. Introduction: Why fanfiction translation?

Even today, there’s a certain element of “not quite knowing where we stand” in relation to the phenomenon of fans, fan culture and one of its most famous products – fanfiction. Over the course of the several decades of its existence, fanfiction, or by the simplest definition, stories that fans write about their favourite fiction worlds and characters from original works and share them online for free, has had a very varied public image, never quite escaping negative stereotypes¹. But even though some indicators suggest fanfiction is now past its massive boom time² (or perhaps just waiting for the next big movie or book craze to draw in writers new and old), the fan culture in general, with its myriads of activities related to fan engagement and creative fan works³, is without a doubt blooming and has been attracting not just a lot of academic interest for quite some time, spawning also a new type of a scholar – the academic-fan, or aca-fan, but very recently also new business models, allowing fans to publish their fanfiction in an official way⁴.

Yet despite all the attention – negative or positive, mainstream or academic, aimed at various different groups of fans – fanfiction writers, fan artists, cosplayers (fans who stylize themselves as their favourite characters using for example home-made costumes), fansubbers (who translate subtitles for TV series and movie subtitles), celebrity or sports fans etc., there’s one small fan group that has been slightly overlooked in all this, although its core activity is the perfect embodiment of what participatory culture⁵ is about, and in some respects even more. While other fan translators (amateur translators of videogames or subtitles) gain much of their sense of identity through the connection with the original, sometimes famous and high-profile official work (videogame, movie or a TV series), fanfiction translators in contrast make other fans if not the stars then at least the centre of attention. Through that, not only do they contribute to the actual sharing, promoting, recreating and spreading other fans’ works, developing sometimes a unique bond with their favourite fan authors in the process, they also participate in shaping the internal social structure of the fan space in a unique way.

Numerous dissertations and MA theses have, together with many scholarly articles, already covered a multitude of areas and subjects related to fanfiction studies or fan translation, but the specific category of fanfiction translation has so far attracted hardly any academic interest (at least in the Anglophone academic world) and very little mainstream one. It is perhaps telling that one of the very few mentions of fanfiction translation outside of its fandom⁶ came not in the form of a scholarly or journalistic article, but in the form of a laudatory blog post⁷ published on the webpage of Wattpad. Wattpad is a global entertainment digital media company, entertainment content producer and a studio, creator of a highly popular and expanding multiplatform application of the same name used for sharing, distributing and reading users’ stories, and also the latest, slightly mysterious player to enter the field of large online fanfiction archives, one whose motives are by definition business-related.

This lack of previous research inevitably broadens the scope of this thesis in that it will be necessary to get to know the subject of our interest better, without being able to draw from previous knowledge collected on this very subject.

This thesis would therefore like to have a closer look at the fanfiction translation phenomena, identifying potential characteristics fanfiction translators share with fanfiction writers or other fan translators. To fulfil this goal, the thesis will closely examine the Czech and Slovak community of fanfiction translators, taking advantage of the fact the respective language fanfiction communities are largely overlapping, through an analysis of a historical context, overview of the fanfiction translation online environment, a questionnaire and a text analysis.

The thesis will operate with an initial hypothesis that fanfiction translators share more characteristics with fanfiction writers than with other fan translators (i.e. fansubbers and videogame fan translators) in terms of basic demographic features, the way they approach the text and the way their work is perceived. More areas of further interest will probably open up during analysis of the data.

The main aim of the thesis is to present fanfiction translation as an intrinsic, inseparable part of the fanfiction community, sharing its very sub-space and one of the many community outlets for fan engagement, characterized mostly by its orientation towards other fans.