earticle

영어

The rapid influx of new digital media technologies and platforms has made it possible for fans of various cultural texts to easily create and distribute their own secondary cultural works. A group of tech-savvy, Korean language proficient fans from different backgrounds have converged to form a "transnational fan community"(Blakley and Kaplan, 2009: 37) for the Korean webtoon Tower of God. These fans have generated timely, efficient and emotionally appealing translations that have been circulated among members of the community. This study will examine the Korean-English fan translations to understand what functions the translations serves for fans and what is at stake in fan interactions for these communities. In particular, the study will compare the established translations offered by Line Webtoon, the official distributor of Tower of God, with the amateur fan translations. The research into various message board posts within the fan community suggest that the fans overwhelmingly prefer the fan translations to the official ones. The study will focus on the interpretative power of fans in generating fan translations with relevant meanings to the individual fan and the community in which the texts circulate.