‘Is it always so fast?’

Abstract

While much research has proved the benefits of subtitled audiovisuals for foreign language learning, few studies address such practices in out-of-classroom settings or focus on Asia-based video-sharing platforms. This study bridges this gap by introducing an increasingly popular viewing-commenting system in Japan and China, known as danmu or danmaku, which displays viewers’ timeline-synchronized comments on video content. We analyse the metalinguistic comments which entail viewers’ knowledge of the language, their comprehension issues and sociolinguistic attitudes toward its use. Adopting an inductive or data-driven methodology, we extracted and manually coded 390 comments that are related to the Spanish language, Spanish–Chinese translation and learning Spanish. Results show that viewers are mostly interested in linguistic features that differ from Chinese or English (e.g. the complex grammar) and they use danmu to access sociolinguistic issues that are central to daily communication such as the fast speech rate, language varieties, and frequent use of vulgarisms.

How humour travels in the new and dynamic mediascape: a case study of a short video platform, Little Red Book, and an online teaching platform, Rain Classroom

“…Hsiao (2015) adopts monomodal pragmatic analysis to examine danmu comments that intend to evoke laughter with a particular reference to tucao. Zhang and Cassany (2019a, 2019b, 2019c use multimodality to analyse the humorous effects drawn on an episode of a Spanish TV series El Ministerio del Tiempo (The Ministry of Time, in some places The Department of Time) (2015-2017, 2020-present) on Bilibili via danmu comments. Junru Mo (2022) argues that fan translation is an effective mediation to amplify the flow of humorous effects mainly through emoticons, bantering and spoofing.…”

Translating humorous videos on social media: Meaning-making in a shared culture

“…Amateur subtitlers, known as fansubbers (abbreviation for fan subtitlers) refer to individuals or groups who voluntarily translate audiovisual texts to pursue individual interests and build ties with networked likeminded people. In today's globalized online spaces, they play a crucial role in the raw material selecting, linguistic translating, and also cultural introducing (Zhang & Cassany, 2019) [2].…”

Development of Chinese Danmaku Video Sites based on Self-Directed Learning (CDSDL) Model for Undergraduate Students in TAM Model

“…Online education is the product of the integration of information technology and education, which has brought about great changes in the way of human learning. In recent years, with the rise of massive open online course (MOOCs), online education has shown a booming trend (Zhang et al, 2019). In the twenty-first century, all colleges and universities have fully utilized modern information technologies, including computer and multimedia network technologies.…”