Pirates (!) Strike Back: Turkish Fansubbers Standing up for Fansubbing

This study is primarily intended to describe Turkish fansubbers' efforts to exist as professionals rather than incompetent amateurs and fansubbing in Turkey and to draft a non-exhaustive fansubber profile on the basis of a corpus mainly consisting of interviews with “famous” Turkish fansubbers, who have been invited for an interview to defend themselves against explicit and implicit allegations and to explain their undertaking. The corpus comprises two types of data source, i.e. print and online media. Drawing on the views of the interviewees, the corpus analysis has assured that the present study can be built on such parameters as legality/ethics, professional recognition, visibility, censorship, quality, motives of fansubbing, remuneration, linguistic proficiency, fansubbing skills and demographics. Together with the literature review, the analyses have shown that the most serious accusation brought against fansubbers is copyright infringement (Hatcher, 2005), i.e. “pirating”, whereas the mildest is mistranslation. Although legal concerns are generally thought to stand out as the severest matter, it is interesting that almost no confrontation exists between fansubbers and copyright holders (Díaz-Cintas and Sánchez, 2006) but it does exist between colleagues and subtitling critics (viewers, columnists or scholars). Thus, it can be speculated that professional recognition is the primary concern of fansubbers although their undertaking is a non-profit voluntary work.