The danmaku interface on Bilibili and the recontextualised translation practice: a semiotic technology perspective

The danmaku interface is a unique feature of video-sharing websites in Asia which allows “live” comments to be directly overlaid onto the video immediately upon being entered. Proceeding from the two-pronged model combining a semiotic resource perspective and a social practice perspective proposed by Djonov and van Leeuwen [2018. “Social Media as Semiotic Technology and Social Practice: the Case of ResearchGate’s Design and Its Potential to Transform Social Practice.” Social Semiotics 28 (5): 641–664] for analysing social media as semiotic technology, this article uses Bilibili.com, the most popular danmaku video website in China, as a case study and analyses the danmaku interface firstly as semiotic technology, exploring the interface design and the meaning-making it predetermines through the semiotic realisations of built-in technological features and semiotic resources it makes available to users, and secondly as a platform which supports and potentially transforms social practices. The argument of the latter will be guided by van Leeuwen’s [2008b. Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press] method of social practice analysis and borne out by a comparison of the recontextualisation of audiovisual translation on Bilibili in the form of danmaku subtitling with the prevailing fansubbing practice.