Cultural globalization from the peripher

1 CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION FROM THE PERIPHERY: TRANSLATION PRACTICES OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING K-POP FANS Accepted and in press at Journal of Consumer Culture Please cite as follows: Cruz, A.G.B., Seo, Y., & Binay, I (2019) Cultural globalization from the periphery: translation practices of English-speaking K-pop fans Journal of Consumer Culture, in press ABSTRACT The international expansion of Korean popular music (K-pop) reflects the increasing dislocation of cultural globalization from Western centers, spurred by the rise of cultural, economic, and political institutions within different regions This study adopts a translation theory perspective on how the meanings of such cultural products from the ‘periphery’ become transculturally intelligible In this endeavor, we analyze the role of online fangenerated paratexts in translating the global consumptionscape of K-pop We reveal how translation practices enable cultural understanding and reinscribe transcultural identity politics, inverting and unsettling ‘traditional’ center-periphery dynamics Fan translation practices emerge as a key node in processes of cultural globalization, underscoring the role of consumer-as-translator and situating cultural globalization not only in localized spaces, but also in the mediated transcultural space of the paratextual field Keywords cultural globalization, center-periphery dynamics, paratextual translation, popular culture, translation theory, K-pop INTRODUCTION JYJ’s spring concert tour in 2012 included 15 venues worldwide including Chile, Barcelona, Berlin, Peru, and Tokyo, where hundreds of fans lined up from 4:00am to get a glimpse of the stars, holding presents and balloons whose colors symbolize allegiance to the idol Their fans, more devout and passionate than popular culture has ever seen, have also formed fan groups of various formats… There are also informal (mostly) online-based communities, where fans participate in exchanges with likeminded people from around the world The bilingual fans devote a vast amount of their time translating every interview, song lyric, and newspaper article to share with others, while others write and consume “fanfics” or form dance “covering groups.” The K-pop world has organized quickly with high domestic and international success." (Shin and Kim, 2013: 256-257) The $4.7 billion Korean popular music (K-pop) industry has recently emerged as a prominent segment of global youth culture (Kim, 2017), which was dubbed by Time Magazine as “South Korea’s greatest export.” (Mahr, 2012) K-pop embodies a non-Western cultural product that encapsulates various interrelated music, celebrity, and media products The internationalization of K-pop can be traced to the export of Korean music, soap operas, and other cultural products to China in the late 1990’s (Shim, 2008) Since then, K-pop spread to other East Asian countries, such as Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Thailand (Huat, 2010) Most recently, the cultural globalization of K-pop has expanded beyond East Asia, associated with the youth movement of ‘K-pop Idols’ that have gained cult-like followings among both Western and Asian consumers (Jung and Hirata, 2012) The international expansion of K-pop reflects the renegotiation of global centerperiphery dynamics, where Western countries were positioned as dominant sources of global popular culture (Iwabuchi, 2002; Joo, 2011; Ryoo, 2009; Shim, 2006) While much of the debate on the assimilation of global cultural products has focused on how Western cultural products and brands are adopted, resisted, and hybridized in other ‘foreign’ regions and countries (Izberk-Bilgin, 2012; Kjeldgaard and Askegaard, 2006), there is an emerging consensus that globalization is becoming increasingly dislocated from Western centers due to the rise of cultural, economic, and political institutions within different regions (Cayla and Eckhardt, 2008) – what Ger (1999: 66) refers to as the “peripheries talking back.” Some materializations include the worldwide popularity of Indian Yoga (Askegaard and Eckhardt, 2012), Manga comic books from Japan (Iwabuchi, 2002) and, more recently, the international expansion of K-pop from South Korea (Shin, 2009) Despite this growing interest, however, there are limited insights about how peripheral cultural products become globally accepted Scholars seem to agree that peripheral cultural products face higher barriers to internationalization compared to their established American counterparts, because international consumers may lack the necessary interpretive frames of reference to make sense of, activate, and negotiate the meanings of a cultural product from the global periphery (Alden et al., 1999; Hoskins and Mirus, 1988; Iwabuchi, 2002) Even though K-pop is a hybridized ensemble featuring appropriations from multiple cultures which render it recognizable as an alternate Asian modernity (Shim, 2006), as a form which is rooted in the cultural sensibilities of South Korea, K-pop is particularly prone to the practical problems of intercultural communication and, consequently, culturally discounted by global audiences K-pop embodies dissonant ideals compared to the “formulas set by Western-based cultural industries” (Jin and Ryoo, 2014: 115), instead emphasizing conformity rather than individual authenticity, professional training over raw talent, and high production values over originality (Shin and Kim, 2013) Nevertheless, this does not detract from the “dense flows of cultural products” within the region (Huat, 2004: 203) and beyond Thus, the sociocultural and consumption processes that enable peripheral cultural products such as K-pop to become transculturally intelligible in the context of contemporary global flows requires further attention Previous studies of K-pop's global expansion more specifically (Huat, 2004; Jin and Ryoo, 2014; Shim, 2006) and studies of cultural globalization from the periphery more broadly (Askegaard and Eckhardt, 2012; Ribke, 2017) have focused their analysis on how the internationalization of cultural industries and cultural producers drive processes of textual adaptation to increasingly global audiences Others have also explored how local consumers appropriate and hybridize the meanings of global cultural products through their consumption practices (Caldwell, 2004; Syed and Runnel, 2014) We augment these perspectives with an additional lens by focusing on the role of international fans, themselves, in remediating the transcultural intelligibility of peripheral cultural products That is, we ask: how fangenerated paratextual translation practices shape processes of cultural globalization from the periphery? In answering this question, informed by the interdisciplinary field of cultural translation studies (Chidlow et al., 2014; Freeman, 2009; Genette, 1997; Gal, 2015; Wolf, 2007), we trace the globalization of K-pop popular culture and focusing on the online paratextual translation practices performed by English-speaking K-pop consumers Our analysis reveals that while paratextual translation practices performed by K-pop fans enable cross-cultural understandings which compensate for cultural discounting, these practices also reconstitute ideological conflicts This process of fracture is not simply ‘glocal’, but transcultural in orientation Our analysis further points to the rise of the consumer-mediator as a key agent in processes of cultural globalization Overall, the field of K-pop translational practices emerges as a key site which facilitates transcultural intelligibility and cultural globalization of peripheral cultural products CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Translation Beyond the obvious conception of translation as a process of interlingual transfer, translation more broadly refers to the “expression in one semiotic system of what has been said, written, or done in another” (Gal, 2015: 227) As Cain (2001: 3) explains, “translation is not just a change of language, but a transformation of many, even all, elements of a text in order that it may make sense for a new audience.” Translation has been extended even further to encompass the alignment of practical effects in the world Gal (2015: 226) describes translation as “communicative processes creat[ing] equivalences and organiz[ing] connections among practices.” In a related formulation, translation is viewed as “the work of bringing two (or more) things into relation with one another” (Freeman, 2009: 436) While the concept of translation is a diffuse concept with a plurivocal trajectory spanning literature, linguistics, and the sociology of science and technology (Freeman, 2009; Gal, 2015; Martin and Schouten, 2014), several key tenets surrounding the concept of translation can be identified (Freeman, 2009) These tenets, as discussed below, underscore the complex dynamics which characterize the cultural backdrop against which cultural products must gain global acceptance Here, it is important to acknowledge that we view the tenets of translation in the practice-based terms (Reckwitz, 2002; Warde, 2005) That is, rather than focusing on the shared structures of cultural discourses and propositions that give meanings to particular translational objects (e.g., translated texts) or the psychological perceptions of decisionmaking actors that motivate them to engage in translations, we aim to understand how these and other translational elements relate within the coordinated ‘doings’ and ‘sayings’ that routine translation as an on-going social accomplishment Thus, translation becomes an active practice which is processual and emergent rather than technical or deterministic Specifically, it takes us beyond the idea that transcultural intelligibility and global acceptance of cultural products results from discrete and linear ‘top-down’ processes, and instead emerges through an ongoing process of “successive translations” and interactions (Freeman, 2009: 430) This view of translation as a ‘bottom-up’ social practice (Wolf, 2007) is strongly resonant with the perspective of globalization as cultural hybridization (Izberk-Bilgin 2012; Kjeldgaard and Askegaard 2006), whereby cultural meanings not ‘move’ from one site to another, but are continually re-negotiated, re-framed and re-constructed in situ This is because translation practices are contingent and contextualized within complex webs of social, cultural and political frames of reference (Hermans, 2000; Toury, 1995; Wolf, 2007), rendering the emergent translated meanings unstable, uncertain, and at times contradictory This process, as Gal (2015: 229) posits, “is invariably the work of a variegated social world”, underscoring the plurivocality of cultures (Wolf, 2002) Hence, translation theory re-lenses the process of fostering transcultural intelligibility as a process of embedding cultural products in relation to complex and dynamic grids of social, cultural, and political interpretive frames of reference, which are continually re-articulated, re-textualized, and renegotiated through continual practices of translation Furthermore, translation practices are generative: they are not only delimited by, but also contribute to, the continually evolving meanings, social practices, and interpretive frames of reference that form around cultural products Translation practices, therefore, not only transmit meaning, but also enable and constrain potentialities for social action In particular, Gal (2015) points to the dual capacities of translation in crafting connections and effecting differentiations; translations can both efface and maintain cultural boundaries This means that translation practices are propelled by, and also contribute to, the construction of power dynamics within and between cultures Thus, translators “are engaged in a political, and not merely technical process” (Freeman, 2009: 435) Translation from the Periphery Scholars of translation theory highlight two key ‘problems of translation’, which hold particular relevance to the challenges of cultural globalization from the periphery The first problem is cross-cultural incommensurability Given differences in underlying cultural milieus, the meanings of a cultural product posed within their culture of origin may not convey the same resonance in the context of another foreign culture (Chidlow et al., 2014; Freeman, 2009; Reiss and Vermeer, 1984) Translation is incomplete and imperfect, incorporating a paradoxical logic of “sameness-in-difference” (Gal, 2015: 226) As Freeman (2009: 430) notes, “[w]hat is translated often seems somehow inferior, not real or original.” This problem of translating across cultural milieus is reflected in an ongoing debate in translation studies about whether translation should ideally ‘domesticate’ a text to increase its intelligibility to the reader or ‘foreignize’ it to maintain a sense of strangeness (Gal, 2015) – a tension which is analogous to whether a cultural product originating from a peripheral culture must localize or preserve its foreignness (Iwabuchi, 2002) The second problem is asymmetrical global power relations which implicitly favor Western cultural meanings Venuti (2008) views translation in the West as a mode of appropriation which often results in the erasure of difference on its own terms Paradoxically, even as translation can be seen as a process which bridges intercultural differences, it is at the same time a “practice which in fact produces the ‘Other’” (Wolf, 2002: 180) This gives rise to questions about symbolic violence and cultural appropriation, whereby, as Freeman (2009: 434) metaphorically explains: “to translate is not merely to ‘carry over’, but to take over.” In the same way, the fostering of transcultural intelligibility for cultural products is nested within these intercultural power dynamics Peripheral popular cultures and their products face implicit disadvantages compared to the ‘global’ popular culture because they must foster transcultural intelligibility in the context of asymmetrical power relations within which such popular cultures are, by default, framed as ‘foreign’ (Cayla and Arnould, 2008) Given these cross-cultural incommensurabilities and asymmetrical power relations, how can peripheral cultural products become transculturally intelligible? METHOD: THE ONLINE PARATEXTS OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING K-POP FANS Translation Practices and Fan-generated Paratexts In translation theory, the concept of ‘paratext’ has emerged as a useful analytical and empirical tool to investigate translation practices, offering a visible and manageable ‘threshold of interpretation’ between the text and the consumer (Leavenworth, 2016) A paratext is defined as any written, audiovisual, or mediated content which enables the reading of a focal text (Cain, 2001; Genette, 1997), for example, a film, recording, music video, or any other cultural product Paratexts, as Genette (1997: 1) contends, are essential to understanding processes of translation because texts are rarely presented in an unadorned state, unreinforced and unaccompanied by a certain number of verbal or other productions […] they surround it and extend it, precisely in order to present it, in the usual sense of the verb but also in the strongest sense: to make present, to ensure the text’s presence in the world, its “reception” and consumption For example, film consumption can be shaped by numerous paratexts including disclaimers, theatrical trailers, and online reviews Paratexts shed light on how consumers perform translation practices by expanding their repertoire of cultural images or by crafting links 10 between previously disparate cultural frames of reference In doing so, “paratextual translation practices increase the social treasury available to readers in order for them to productively activate a text” (Cain, 2001: 200) The ways in which international consumers lens their interpretations of K-pop are often facilitated through a plethora of online fan-generated paratexts (Huat and Jung, 2014) Specifically, in many international markets where K-pop is less accessible due to the absence of formal cultural intermediaries, the transnational circulation of K-pop paratexts is amplified by social media sources, such as fan-blogs, peer-to-peer websites, video-sharing websites, and micro-blogging sites (Jung, 2014) While user-generated content on social media may not always be produced with the intention of translating for an intended audience, they nevertheless have translative effects and are situated in the performance of translation practices This suggests that the fans of K-pop, themselves, play a productive role (Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010; Sugihartati, 2017; Tse and Tsang, 2018) in translating this multi-faceted cultural product for its potential international consumers From this perspective, the online fan-generated conversations around K-pop provide a rich field of paratexts to investigate translation practices that facilitate the transcultural intelligibility of K-pop beyond its national and regional boundaries Our focus on translation practices as observed through fan-generated paratexts echoes a growing emphasis on the central and active role of consumers in appropriating global cultural meanings (Dong and Tian, 2009; Izberk-Bilgin, 2012) In the field of consumer culture, in particular, scholars have underlined how consumers generate value for brands (Schau et al., 2009) and shape the trajectories of markets, even creating market spaces where none had existed before (Martin and Schouten, 2014) Collectively, these perspectives support Chen et al.’s (2017: 92) assertion of a “new globalization paradigm where 17 Being a KPOP fan doesn't require a person to be Korean It is easy to love KPOP trends because of its music The rhythm contributes a lot Listening to kpop songs release happiness It has a good rhythm that most persons love to listen to even though they cannot understand the lyrics The dance steps are great The synchronization and the way the dancers move are great (online forum post) In a similar vein, other translation practices facilitate further forms of embodied practical knowledge for international K-pop fans by illustrating the unique ways in which K-pop artists put on make-up, style their hair, or choose their clothing (Appendix 1D) In summary, fan-generated translation practices assist international consumers in decoding semiotic codes and acculturating to the unique embodied performances involved in consuming K-pop Decoding K-pop’s symbols and inhabiting its performances contributes toward transcultural intelligibility, helping consumers not merely to understand but also to competently activate and routinise K-pop’s meanings Simply put, fan translation practices offer an important dictionary and practical manual for consuming a peripheral cultural product Reinscribing Transcultural Identity Politics Fan translation practices in the online paratextual field also constitute a significant site for the negotiation of national, pan-ethnic, and regional identities As international consumers learn more about K-pop’s semiotic codes and embodied consumption, through online fangenerated paratexts, consumers are also exposed to negotiations with respect to how K-pop consumption affirms, hybridizes or outright opposes local cultural norms and values In essence, they enable international consumers to answer the question: where does K-pop stand in the context of my local cultural identity? Because this practice of translation strikes the core of consumers’ deeply-seated cultural beliefs about ‘who we are’ and ‘who we are not’, 18 this process is inevitably fraught with tension and politicizes the meaning of global cultural products (Izberk-Bilgin, 2012) The fan-generated paratexts that we observed frequently framed identity negotiations with respect to ethnic or pan-ethnic identities ‘Black K-pop fans’, for example, provided a genre of paratexts through which mostly African American K-pop fans discussed the cultural appropriation of African American culture in K-pop music and music videos The translation practices reflected in these paratexts underscore the uneasy juxtaposition of K-pop’s appropriation of rap and hip-hop music alongside culturally insensitive representations of African American people in Korean popular media I’m a kpop fan who has dark skin I love my skin My friend and I are going to see SM artist next year Buying a global package My friend wants to see the artist I have a huge problem with that Because SM artist have either done black face or make fun of dark skinned people I'm dark and my mom is darker than me I would feel uncomfortable being near all those people who view white skin as gold I really want to meet TVXQ But then I think what if they make fun of my skin Am I being silly? (blog post) Notably, African American fans have been shown to skillfully integrate their racial identities with their fan identities, and participate within an ‘international’ fandom that is positioned within the periphery, helping to create the global K-pop community (Oh, 2017) It is important to note that, within this identity negotiation process, racialized tensions result in ambivalence among African American K-pop fans Other forms of identity politics are evident within translation practices performed by international K-pop fans with Korean ethnic backgrounds The online paratexts generated by Korean American fans, in particular, conveyed the ethnic connotations of K-pop which 19 impose implicit sanctions on these consumers and how they manage K-pop consumption in relation to localized bicultural identity politics What I find funny is that Korean Americans (or even Koreans that live in the USA) are sort of shy talking about anything like Kpop or the Korean media culture such as variety shows or dramas They'll talk to you about it in private but unlike non-Korean fans it'll be weird for a Korean American to talk about it out loud with a group of friends Maybe it's just my friends but we talk about variety shows and such very openly when we're alone but never when we're eating out It's almost like a weird taboo subject or something (online forum post) Translation practices can foster affinity spaces within a culture where K-pop fans feel marginalized (Yoon and Jin, 2016; Min et al., 2018) The above paratext concerning the Korean diaspora and their consumption of K-pop, which reveals the consumption-related stigma Korean Americans face in the context of US culture, forms a potent case in point Thus, translation practices help international consumers to contextualize the multilayered meanings of K-pop in relation to their own complex global and local cultural identity dynamics They can affirm hybridized cultural milieus, underscore questions about cultural appropriation, or call attention to multicultural identity tensions as they are experienced by consumers across diverse cultural milieus In light of the cross-cultural dissonance and incommensurabilities (Chidlow et al., 2014; Freeman, 2009; Gal, 2015) which arise when translating the meanings of K-pop across cultural boundaries, fan-generated paratexts help consumers to vivify, make sense of, and negotiate the resulting identity disjunctures Understanding how this foreign cultural product echoes with respect to one’s cultural identities constitutes another important facet of transcultural intelligibility, which helps consumers to embed the foreign cultural product’s meanings within their established cultural frames of reference Put differently, translation practices help consumers comprehend how the cultural baggage of K-pop sits with their own 20 Furthermore, fan-generated translation practices evoke identity politics on a broader scale: toward the realization of a global geopolitical consumptionscape, with global centerperiphery dynamics playing out in the transnational paratextual field In essence, translation practices enable consumers to answer the question: where is/are the global center(s) of Kpop? How is my locality positioned in relation to these global center(s)? Here, translation practices reinscribe global identity politics, revealing an unfolding logic which mirrors yet inverts the ‘traditional’ center-periphery dynamics that have primarily taken the U.S as its center (Alden et al., 1999; Ger, 1999) Instead, a dynamic tension emerges between the global centers of K-pop (e.g., South Korea, Japan) and its international periphery (e.g., the U.S., Australia) As English-speaking K-pop fans become more deeply immersed in their sensemaking journeys of K-pop, a plethora of paratexts can bring to light their peripheral position within the global K-pop market This peripheral position is realized in two ways First, the relative lack of formally established infrastructures to facilitate the consumption of K-pop in their local milieus emerges as a recurrent refrain in international K-pop forums While many international K-pop fans’ initial journeys toward deriving meaning from K-pop is heavily reliant on fan-generated paratexts, some of these online paratexts also underscore the desire for a formally established infrastructure of transcultural translation I definitely prefer if the translator has taken some liberties and interpreted to make the translation make the most sense, but it's much more work on the translator and since they're mostly all volunteers I appreciate whatever I get This is why I'd like to see companies actually hire somebody to translate as their job, they could spend more time and put out really understandable captions rather than just word-for-word translations which can come out kind of jumbled (online forum post) From what I've seen here (on forum) about concert it seems most company sees international fans as huge cash cows to milk and gives the lowest bidder to sh**ty 21 concert promoters, I doubt I will go to a concert but da*n it hire a decent concert promoter and get your sh*t organized… (online forum post) At the very least, let me pay for streaming/buying music without jumping through a million hoops Alternatively, making an English-accessible version of MELON (South Korean online music store) would work (online forum post) Second, this peripheral position is additionally realized through the translation practices which express a recurrent tension between “international” and Korean fans of KPop The following comment, for example, was linguistically translated from a Korean K-pop website into English and featured in several English K-pop forums When I see their comments, they [international K-pop fans] write on things they have no clue over [ ] Especially on culturally sensitive topics, they have no clue yet they are so exasperating in their attitude [ ] They probably heard from people who accidentally misinterpreted or mistranslated from somewhere [ ] There is no communicating with these fans (Korean K-pop blog post as translated into English by international K-pop fans) This linguistically translated text, in turn, was further translated by English-speaking K-pop fans as a distorted representation of Korean fans’ perspectives on non-Korean K-pop consumers, spurring the production of paratexts wherein international K-pop fans legitimized and defended their position within, and contributions to, the global geopolitical landscape of K-pop: Aren't the international fans the reason the Hallyu wave [Korean wave] is as big as it is now?! I get the whole culture difference but they should feel more of a bond with international fans (comment on YouTube) We are the ones who spend $20-$50 or even more for a simple album and they probably get them for half that or maybe even less same with concert prices since 22 we have to pay them for their time, travel and for putting the concert on for us plus we pay the venue as well they should be happy about us spreading the love for kpop and their country and culture cuz before kpop i never heard about people wanting to go to korea or having interest in learning their culture (comment on YouTube) While these conflicts reflect, on one level, previous insights about battles for authenticity and legitimacy within online fan cultures (Denison, 2011), at the same time, viewing these through the center-periphery lens allows us to see how such battles also reflect quasinationalistic concerns Given that K-pop heavily draws on non-Korean imagery and faces threats of being overly Americanized or ‘internationalized’ (Hare and Baker, 2017), Korean fans feel a stronger sense to preserve the ‘Koreanness’ of K-pop and defend their cultural ownership of K-pop This, in turn, heightens tensions with non-Korean fans In summary, translation practices enable international fans to chart positionalities in relation to K-pop’s dynamic and evolving geopolitical landscape The global geopolitical landscape is realized, in both senses of the word: these center-periphery dynamics not only become apparent, but are also continually re-shaped and contested by international fans The practices of translation, therefore, extend beyond the well-documented negotiation of tensions between globalism and localism (Caldwell, 2004; Ritzer and Ryan, 2004) to include the negotiation of tensions which animate K-pop at a transnational level Identity politics now plays out on a transnational scale, where asymmetrical power relations which define the ‘center’ and ‘periphery’ of the global cultural landscape are continuously contested and renegotiated If the logic of cultural hybridity involves a continual contestation of globalized structures of power (Bhabha, 1994; Featherstone, 1990), then K-pop fan translation practices can be said to fuel this ongoing process of cultural hybridization But to what effect? While we see an intriguing inversion wherein consumers based in the West find themselves at the periphery of a global consumption phenomenon, these practices of fan translation result in a reified, essentialized discourse which solidifies rather than blurs boundaries between self and 23 Other In place of historical anxieties surrounding globalization-as-(American)hegemonisation (Joo, 2011), fan translation practices provide a window into new, inverted, asymmetries of cultural exchange DISCUSSION Popular culture has emerged as force for globalization, driving the circulation of lifestyles, images, and cultural meanings across borders In light of successive waves of cultural globalization which are complicating center-periphery dynamics in the global economy (Ger, 1999; Iwabuchi, 2002), our analysis of K-pop casts a lens on fan-generated translation practices and how they facilitate and shape the phenomenon of the “peripheries talking back” (Ger, 1999: 66) In doing so, we shed light on a driver of this intriguing cultural flow, providing a window into how K-pop, despite the challenges of globalizing from the periphery, has found pockets of popularity in a range of unlikely cultures beyond East Asia and Southeast Asia Fan-generated translations provide a means for non-Korean consumers to locate a ‘foreign’ cultural product in relation to their existing cultural frames of reference These extend beyond establishing linguistic intelligibility (e.g., through previously discussed practices of fan subtitling, Denison, 2011), to involve the translation of semiotic codes and embodied performances, as well as complex negotiations in relation to global and local cultural identities, and the realization of geopolitical positionalities Even though K-pop contains a host of unfamiliar cultural elements, fan-generated translation practices helps craft connections between the familiar and the unfamiliar, thereby building the frameworks of intelligibility required to consume its multi-layered meanings Our findings thus help advance an emerging stream of research which aims to generate insights about the role of fans as cultural intermediaries and translators (Chen, 2018; Denison, 2011; Sugihartati, 2017) 24 Fan translation practices draw analytical attention away from a dominant emphasis on producer-driven adaptations of cultural products, which echoes a multinational or corporation-driven view of cultural globalization (Foster, 2008; Huat, 2004; Shim, 2006), and instead emphasizes the importance of a transnational paratextual field in enabling the global diffusion of cultural products In contrast to a primary focus on the role of cultural producers and cultural intermediaries in crafting cultural resonance between a cultural product and its transnational audiences, this study highlights the productive role of international fans in negotiating this cultural alignment Our analysis further points to the rise of the consumer-translator as a key agent in processes of cultural globalization Even though the studies shaped by the informing logic of glocalisation have previously framed consumers as active readers and appropriators of plurivocal cultural product meanings (Dong and Tian, 2009; Kjeldgaard and Askegaard, 2006), this study extends this perspective by showing how consumers are also productive intercultural translators of interpretive frames for globalizing cultural products Consumers not only draw on culturally specific interpretive frames to interpret the plurivocal meanings of a global cultural product, but also shape, modify, and expand these interpretive frames Put differently, consumers actively acculturate local and transnational audiences in line with the culturally rooted meanings and practices of K-pop, cultivating the cultural conditions for this cultural product to become more intelligible in foreign markets Translation practices thus offer a way of advancing the process of cultural globalization As Featherstone (1990) surmised, the social construction of global cultures encompasses contradictory processes, simultaneously enabling cultural integration and disintegration Our analysis reveals that while translation practices enable cross-cultural understandings which compensate for cultural discounting, these practices also reconstitute ideological conflicts Beyond the well-documented ideological tensions between the ‘global’ 25 and the ‘local’ which frequently occur in the consumption of global cultural products (Dong and Tian, 2009; Izberk-Bilgin, 2012), our findings show the emergence of a quasinationalistic geopolitics within the transnational fandom of K-pop Consumption is not only “grounded in specific locations” (Huat, 2004: 211), but is also situated in transnational ‘third cultures’ (Featherstone, 1990) which bring multiple cultural flows into convergence Our findings underscore that this intensified convergence of multiple cultures in the transnational space of K-pop fandom does not only engender a tolerance for Otherness, but also the converse: interpellating individuals from diverse backgrounds into “cultural prestige competitions” (Featherstone, 1990: 10) While a sense of place is at times erased in processes of paratextual translation, this sense of place is at other times re-inscribed with a vengeance This process of constant renegotiation is sustained and facilitated by the fans’ search for identity which is crucial in the development of global popular culture (Strinati, 2014) Tribal ideologies and histories collide as fans collectively negotiate and contest issues of cultural appreciation, appropriation, and ownership which permeate the consumption of Kpop Thus, the translocal dispersal of the online paratextual field effaces cultural barriers to the global acceptability of popular cultural products emanating from the global periphery, yet reconstructs new boundaries between the self and Other which are inscribed and situated in a transcultural, rather than glocal, imagined spatial plane This dynamic links to Strinati’s (2014) view of popular culture as a battleground, providing a potent cultural site of struggles for identity and a site upon which conflicting ideologies are contested, formed, and continually renegotiated, and importantly, where dominant ideologies can be challenged and unsettled As we see in this study, cultural tensions erupt as K-pop fans challenge and unsettle dominant center to periphery flows of popular culture In conclusion, fan translation practices flatten the global consumptionscape of K-pop in two senses of the word: by reducing barriers to reading, and by reducing the complex 26 dialectics between self and Other to a quasi-nationalistic rendering With the growth of social media and its capacity to create networks of translation which often traverse national market boundaries (Huat and Jung, 2014), these reflexive processes of transnational bridging and fracturing will conceivably be intensified REFERENCES Alden DL, Steenkamp JBEM and Batra R (1999) Brand positioning through advertising in Asia, North America, and Europe: the role of global consumer culture Journal of Marketing 63(1): 75-87 Askegaard S and Eckhardt GM (2012) Glocal yoga: re-appropriation in the Indian consumptionscape Marketing Theory 12(1): 45-60 Bhabha HK (1994) The Location of Culture New York: Routledge Cain LA (2001) Reading culture: the translation and transfer of Australianness in contemporary fiction Unpublished doctoral thesis, Queensland University of Technology, Queensland, Australia Caldwell ML (2004) Domesticating the French fry: McDonald’s and consumerism in Moscow Journal of Consumer Culture 4: 5-26 Cayla J and Arnould EJ (2008) A cultural approach to branding in the global marketplace Journal of International Marketing 16(4): 86-112 Cayla J and Eckhardt GM (2008) Asian brands and the shaping of a transnational imagined community Journal of Consumer Research 35(2): 216-230 Chen ZT (2018) Poetic prosumption of animation, comic, game and novel in a post-socialist China: A case of a popular video-sharing social media Bilibili as heterotopia Journal of Consumer Culture 27 Chidlow A, Plakoyiannaki E and Welch C (2014) Translation in cross-language international business research: beyond equivalence Journal of International Business Studies 45(5): 562-582 Cova B and Dalli D (2009) Working consumers: the next step in marketing theory? 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