The reception of fan and official translations of a Chinese Internet novel in the transmedia context.

This study explores fan reception of two English translations of a Chinese Internet danmei novel (a genre focusing on a romantic relationship between two male characters), a fan translation and an official print version. The reception of the novel is situated within a broader mediascape shaped by multiple audiovisual adaptations and fan participation, both of which influence how meaning is understood, constructed, and negotiated. Using an online ethnographic approach, the study analyses fan-generated content from Goodreads and Exiled Rebels to investigate how readers evaluate and discuss translation-related issues and interact with each other. The findings reveal that fans place significant value on both the availability and accuracy of translated texts. Their meticulous scrutiny of the translations reflects a desire to grasp the cultural and narrative nuances of the xianxia genre, gain deeper insight into character dynamics, and uncover "evidence of love" to support romantic pairings. Furthermore, interactive fan practices, particularly dual reading and distributed mentorship, emerge as important mechanisms of interpretation and knowledge-sharing. These practices demonstrate how transmedia reception is collectively shaped through participatory engagement, making translation reception an inherently social and context-dependent phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]