On China’s Fansub Groups:a Subcultural Perspective

Fansub group refers to the fans group who makes subtitles for the foreign video works,it is a new thing born in the Internet Age which is non-official and elective. At present, theChina’s fansub groups have greater vigor in the folk, they have gained the vast majority ofnetizens’ support mainly by non-official and non-profit forms of sharing the culturalresources.The rise and growth of the fansub groups reflects a variant of China’s youthsubculture, to some extent, it also reflects the change of the image communication andthe acceptance mechanism, which means a state not controlled by the national, provincialand municipal television stations’ one-sided communication by their technologicalpowers. In a sense, the fansub groups are striking the image hegemony controlled by themainstream medias，at the same time, it also can be seen as a resistance to thepowerful cultural resources offensive of Europe, American, Japan, South Korea andother countries. However, the fansub groups are now facing some difficulties and obstacles,the most distinctive one is that they are challenged with infringement.The thesis is based on the China’s fansub groups, the first part introduces theresearching status、researching significance and researching methods about this essay. Thesecond part looks back into the past of the China’s fansub groups and introduces the maintypes of them. The third part is set to analyze the main features of the subculture, whichinclude people, virtual communities and content reproduction of the fansub group. Thefourth part explains the relationship between the fansub group and the other cultures, suchas China’s mainstream culture, western culture and internet culture. The last part firstanalyzes the problems the fansub groups are facing, which includes copyright, competitionbetween fansub groups, organization，money and so on，on this basis，we explore theirway of transformation and concrete measures, at last, we will make some rationalpredictions for the foreground of China’s fansub groups.