Bridging the cultural gap. Chinese professional subtitles vs fansubs of l’amica geniale

Awarded “Best Foreign TV Series” at the Shanghai Television Festival in 2020, the Italian TV series L’amica geniale gained significant popularity among Chinese audiences. Despite aspects of its plot that seemingly conflict with China’s official restrictions on foreign media imports, the series was broadcast on three major Chinese streaming platforms. However, the official Chinese subtitles have faced criticism, with viewers expressing dissatisfaction over plot omissions and the mistranslation of Italian cultural references. In contrast, five unofficial, fansubbed versions are playing a crucial role in the series’ success. This study aims to investigate the challenges faced by the Chinese official audiovisual translation industry in accurately conveying cultural references, particularly in the context of minority languages like Italian. It also seeks to explore the role of fansubbing as an alternative and often more effective means of cross-cultural mediation. While employing subversive strategies, Chinese fansubbers serve as a key gateway for introducing Italian media to Chinese audiences. The study adopts a multi-method, triangulated qualitative approach, combining contrastive translation analysis, netnography, and audience reception research. The contrastive translation analysis categorizes cultural references by domains and translation strategies, following the frameworks of Molina (2006), Díaz Cintas and Remael (2007, 2021), Pedersen (2011), and Ranzato (2016). This is complemented by netnographic research (Kozinets 2010), involving online archival data collection and semi-structured interviews with some of the translators. Additionally, a small-scale reception study using focus group discussions assesses how audiences perceive the presumably mistranslated cultural references and their impact on the viewing experience. The findings highlight the limitations of the official Chinese AVT industry in handling Italian-language content and emphasize the critical role of fansubbing in bridging linguistic and cultural gaps. Fansubs, despite their unofficial status, help ensure a more authentic and accessible representation of Italian media for Chinese audiences.