ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology of Language
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1577260
This article is part of the Research TopicDiscourse, Conversation and Argumentation: Theoretical Perspectives and Innovative Empirical Studies, Volume IVView all 3 articles
Danmu subtitling as a self-regulative practice: a descriptive discourse analysis of Bilibili danmu subtitles from ethical perspectives
Provisionally accepted
- Nankai University, Tianjin, China
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Translation ethics is an important aspect of Translation Studies that has gained increasing attention in recent years. From an ethical perspective, this study investigates the onscreen commenting system: danmu subtitling, an emergent non-professional and collaborative translation practice popular in Asian communities. Adopting, modifying and expanding Andrew Chesterman’s models of translation ethics, i.e. representation ethics, service ethics, communication ethics, norm-based ethics and ethics of professional commitment and proposing an ethics of digital technology, this study delves into how ethical principles explain the user-generated danmu subtitles. Descriptive discourse analysis is performed in this study observing an episode of Tamara’s World (uploaded with no subtitles or translations), an English variety show, examining 296 translation-related instances among 1,490 danmu comments. Findings indicate that multiple ethical models elucidate danmu subtitling practices, which encounter distinct ethical conflicts. Consequently, adaptive regulation is proposed to resolve these conflicts.
Keywords: danmu subtitling, Translation ethics, Ethical conflict, Online collaborative translation, descriptive discourse analysis, Bilibili
Received: 15 Feb 2025; Accepted: 27 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zeng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Duo Zeng, Nankai University, Tianjin, China
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