Agency in non-professional manga translation in Iran

Abstract

The present study addresses the phenomenon of online nonprofessional translation of manga in the context of Iran from the perspective of agency. It focuses on the people involved in decision-making in nonprofessional translation production, the non-professional translators' motivations for their free immaterial labor as well as the factors that can constrain or increase their willingness or ability to translate manga into Persian. These questions were answered based on the activities of AnimWorld, the largest Iranian community of non-professional translators. The results suggest that non-professional translations differ from professional translations in terms of decision-making processes, motivations of the individuals involved as well as the contexts where they practice.

Motivation and challenges of Trainee Translators Participating in Translation Training

“…Globally, we have noted several relevant previous studies that inform this research: motivation and volunteering translation in Russian contexts (Olohan, 2013), motivation in technical translation (Tarasova, Kradetskaya, & Kudlay, 2015), interpreters trainees 'motivation (Wu, 2016), agency and translation (Abdolmaleki, Tavakoli, & Ketabi, 2018), and motivation in translation learning (Liu & Yu, 2019). These studies have covered motivation in translation in different contexts excluding the Indonesian setting.…”

“…In Iran, Abdolmaleki et al (2018) explored the online non-professional translation phenomenon. Using the theoretical concept of agency, this study identified that the community of non-professional translator within the Iranian context have a high willingness to translate, despite their ability to translate is limited.…”

“…The findings reflect more the self-concept, which we borrow the term of "ideal selves" (Dörnyei & Chan, 2013, p. 438), making the benefits of learning for their selves. Furthermore, the motivation to master different skills through translation reflects more personal effort and intrinsic psychological motivation (Abdolmaleki et al, 2018). This motivation leads to the development of professional profession (Abduh, Rosmaladewi, & Basri, 2018;Rosmaladewi & Abduh, 2017;Rosmaladewi, Abduh, & Basri, 2020) There is an opportunity for them to reflect on their learning, language competence, and translation performance.…”

“…This finding reflects the debate on whether the knowledge of the translation mechanism is important or not. Abdolmaleki et al (2018) suggest that to be a professional translator requires the knowledge of translation, not like the practice of online non-professional translators in Iran. Knowledge of translation procedure is the fundamental weapon to become a good translator (Robinson, 2002).…”

A social semiotic multimodal analysis of ateji translation in manga

“…Manga is popular worldwide, and it has led translation studies to address different aspects of the genre: format (Rota 2008(Rota /2014; scanlation (Rampant 2010); 擬音語 (giongo, words used to mimic sound) and 擬態語 (gitaigo, words used to mimic actions, situations or behaviours that do not involve sound) (Fujimura 2012; Inose 2010); mode fluidity (Huang and Archer 2014); typefaces ( Armour and Takeyama 2015); wine language (Jones and Normand-Marconnet 2016) and agency in non-professional manga translation (Abdolmaleki, Tavakoli and Ketabi 2018;Fabbretti 2019). Nevertheless, manga translations have received less attention than comic translations (Jüngst 2004, 83) because the manga is not accepted as media content, and the researchers have insufficient knowledge of the Japanese language (O'Hagan 2007).…”