互聯網大衆翻譯模式微探: 歷史、現時、未來

The development of the internet and computer technology has brought about the democratization of information. More and more grass-root users start to initiate and participate in translation activities, and attracted public attention. The development of China’s internet translation communities reveals a pattern. That is, the translation communities started from non-profit grass-root initiation, gradually become organized, patent-protected, and even for-profit productions. “User-generated translation” and “crowdsourcing translation” are the theoretical frameworks that can explain these phenomena. This article traces the development of China’s internet translation communities in the past ten years, proposes the cultural and market value of such translation mode, and points out possible future challenges for the non-professional online translators. As for the non-professional translation communities, they have the following characters: firstly, they are carried out by grass-root internet users. Secondly, some of the communities survived through their conflict with the dominant discourse, while some failed to. Thirdly, crowdsourcing translation is more efficient when translating multimodal texts than the plain texts. All these characters provide shed a light on the new direction for the translation industry in China.