Fan translations of SKAM: Challenging Anglo linguistic and popular cultural hegemony in a transnational fandom

The transnational success of the Norwegian multimedia series SKAM is unique in the Scandinavian context and a prime example of how fans’ translation, communication, and dissemination practices can lead to a series’ international success. In this study, we argue that fan translation of SKAM emphasizes the value of bi-/multilinguality by positioning Norwegian as a resource within a transnational online community, while simultaneously masking the ways in which translation into English normalizes English as the global language of communication and contributes to the Anglo-American dominance of online global media fandom. Nonetheless, fans’ use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) positions it as a democratic resource, challenging native-speaker hegemony (cf. House 2013; Widdowson 1994), and fans’ online translation and dissemination of non-Anglo media into English are practices which subvert the very dominance they actualize, challenging the privileged status of English by carving out space for non-Anglo linguistic expertise and positioning linguistic knowledge and the multicompetent language user as valuable (cf. Cook 1991; Cook 1992). This also creates a digital space for valuing non-Anglo popular cultural objects, languages, and cultures

From The Editors

Overview of the special issue, Transcultural and Intermedial Fairy Tales and Televisio

Ḥannā Diyāb’s Tales, Part II

Introduced by the essay on Ḥannā Diyāb in vol. 32, no. 1, we present the second part of our translation from Antoine Galland’s journal entries, between May 25 and June 2, 1709