Misrepresented by the cultural and language industries for diverse reasons, users of minority and minoritized languages sometimes find ways to reclaim spaces where their languages can play a significant part. For instance, there are digital linguistic activism practices in grassroots communities that reposition L2 learning and use as agency with a social purpose (Zourou, 2020). Among multiple manifestations, fan translation may represent a fine interlinguistic and intercultural example of linguistic activism with a socially agentive purpose while affording language learning. A plain explanation of fan translation is translation made by fans for fans where a fan is understood as someone who is deeply connected to something or someone famous, oftentimes in relation to popular culture products (Sauro, 2019). A closer look into fan translation uncovers an intricate relationship between the activity of fan-translating and the motives of individual fan translators and fan translation communities. Some fan translators seek to expand the repertoire of popular culture products in minoritized languages such as Galician and Catalan. Using qualitative and digital ethnography techniques and thematic and discourse analysis, we were able to explain fan translation of video games with different individual fan translators and fan translation communities. Out of the fan translation communities we studied, one specifically aims at fan-translating video games into Catalan, a minoritized language in Spain (with an even more limited presence in Roussillon, France and Alghero, Italy). Consolidated findings indicate (1) the ecology of fan translation practices when the aim is to validate Catalan as a language of cultural consumption and production, (2) how fan translation prompts language learning not only by translating, but also by collectively discussing about translation strategies and choices, (3) how validating Catalan requires a high degree of interlinguistic awareness between the target language (Catalan), the source language for meaning verification (English), and intermediary dominant languages that may influence linguistic choices in Catalan (Spanish). Validating Catalan as a language for cultural consumption and production intersects linguistic choices in the fan translation community in interesting ways: (1) differentiating Catalan from Castilian Spanish, (2) recovering and promoting linguistic features perceived as 'more' Catalan, (3) favoring idiomatic and socioculturally embedded translation solutions in Catalan, signaling features of Catalan/Mediterranean culture, and (4) trying to promote the use of Catalan intralinguistic variants or other minoritized languages in the friend-zone of Catalan, like Aranese. In essence, fan translation can be either a sign of linguistic cosmopolitanism and activism or breeding ground for linguistically exclusive stances in the Catalan sociolinguistic reality. Both manifestations can be understood against contemporary political and linguistic realities of specific ethnolinguistic communities, and such sociocultural factors need to be considered if fan translation is ever to be integrated in language classrooms in some way or another.
References
Sauro, S. (2019). Fan fiction and informal language learning. In M. Dressman & R. W. Sadler (Eds.), The Handbook of Informal Language Learning (pp. 139–151). Wiley-Blackwell.
Zourou, K. (2020). Language learning as the agency for a social purpose: examples from the coronavirus pandemic. Alsic, Vol. 23, n° 1. https://doi.org/10.4000/alsic.4880
