On Making Multi-Lingual Fannish Communities

[dagas_isa]

Thinky thoughts on translation/multi-lingual features for Ao3, and my personal fantasy features for making fanfiction translations more accessible for fans. This is a completely tangential spin-off from this post by lian, particularly:

I know a bit about advocating for not yet existing users. The strong parallel I draw is between making the Archive English only, because, well, this is where we're at at the moment -- English-language mediafandom. But I think it would be ineffably sad if we denied our own potential as an organisation, denied ourselves to grow and become richer, because we were unable to consider and incorporate other voices and perspectives. Other languages, other definitions of fannish community, of fanworks.

And particularly this comment thread in that post started by boosette which elaborates on translations features.

In general, this idea of creating mutli-lingual/interlingual fandom communities is hugely appealing to me, and the ability to enjoy fannish works across language and culture barriers is a big part of what I would want in an archive. What follows is basically why this would be awesome (to me), what I think would need to happen for the Ao3 to be a mutilingual fan community, and how the Ao3 would have to develop in regards to features in order to achieve that multilinguality.

Why?

• Connecting people and helping to break language and culture barriers is awesome.
• It encourages participation from a wider range of fans, particularly those who want to write fic but do not feel comfortable writing fic in the fandom's dominant language. Or who read fic in the fandom's dominant language, but don't feel comfortable leaving comments.
• It could boost the range of fanworks available for small fandoms, obscure parts of larger fandoms, and fans outside the fandom's usual sphere of participation.
• As a principle, I don't think the largest fandom projects/internet projects should be English-only/English-dominant. Proficiency in English should be a bonus to participating in fandom, not a requirement.
• As far as my awareness of fandom goes, there isn't any sort of fannish space that expressly facilitates interaction between fans who speak different languages.
• If one sees transformative works as having the potential to develop skills, this is definitely a way of getting fans invested in developing multiple language/cultural competencies. (Though that's probably a side effect)
• Did I mention, breaking language and culture barriers is awesome?

What?

• Create a site that's welcoming and easy-to-use for non-English speaking fen and that serves their needs both as individual fans, and as a gathering place as a non-English speaking fandom community.
• Raise awareness of the Ao3 and its multi-lingual capacities to non-English speaking fandoms, particularly small fandoms.
• Create functionality on the site that removes barriers for interlanguage fandom communication, and allows interaction between fans and fanworks across language barriers.

The first two, I think are already part of Ao3's development plan, the third is a spinoff. I also think the first and second are necessary in making the third plausible. That is the Ao3 has to work as a Spanish language archive, a French language archive, and an English language archive for example, before it can even start to work as a place of Spanish-English-French fannish interaction.


How?

General:

• Make the totality of the archive's interface available in as many languages as possible. I believe the OTW is working on this.
• The ability to tag a fic's primary language as a subset of a language tag. They already have the ability to display all the works in one language, but an author does not have the ability to automatically assign a primary language to their fic. ETA: The ability to choose languages already exists, though it's not prominent in the structure.
• Support for non-English/U.S.ian forms of fan-creation. The most obvious example to come to mind would be support for fan-comics/doujinshi, but there are possibly other examples culturally-specific forms of fan-creation out there (I say, fishing for examples).
• Create ways of leaving comments/feedback on works that don't require proficiency in the fic's original language on the part of a reviewer. Ratings/emoticons/a set of stock phrases automatically translated into several languages, for example.

Translation-centric:

• The ability for an author to automatically grant/grant with stipulations/withhold permission for others to translate their work when they post a fic.
• The ability to denote that a work is a translation and not an original work. Conversely, the ability to denote that an original work has translated versions available.
• The ability to link multiple translations and an original work as being different language versions of the same work. Furthermore, the ability to have multiple-translations of the same work in the same language.
• Author notification when a translation of their work has been uploaded.

I am not functionally multi-lingual. I'm speaking mostly as an English-speaking member of a tiny fandom that has a fairly small but international fanbase outside the canon's country of origin. I know some Spanish and some Japanese, but wouldn't feel comfortable doing full-on translations from or into either language.

I am also not a programmer. So I suggest most of these features in a dreamer's "head in the clouds" way without thinking of what it would take to implement them or unintended consequences. If I were trying to use the archive to connect multiple fandom communities and circumvent language barriers, these are simply the steps and features that I would use to facilitate that sort of interaction.

Also, for the purpose of this "original work" means the first (non-translated) version of a fanfiction. It could also include any other form of fan participation where language plays an important role in understanding content.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Further reading: rodo Why the AO3 needs to be translated