COMPLETION REPORTThe Phenomenon of Fansubbing Among University Students
Intan Safinaz Zainudin(+2)
Senior Lecturer
Unit of Translation and Foreign Languages,
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Universiti Kebangsaan MalaysiaMalaysia
The title of this research is ‘The Phenomenon of Fansubbing Among Univesity Students’ with thecode 168401-61. The research started in April 2017 and ended on 30th March 2019. A survey was carriedout on 1024 students from 8 universities including Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Institut
Teknologi Malaysia, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Universiti Perguruan Sultan Idris, Universiti Malaya,
Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia
and 2 private preparatory colleges that train students to further studies in Japan including INTEC
Education College and Mara Japan Industrial Institute.
The findings based on the survey showed interesting information about the profile of anime fans among
university students. 62.8% of the respondents were female, 37.1% male. They were between the age of
17-24. 76% of them learned Japanese in a formal setting and they enjoyed watching anime and its
subtitlies. 54.9% knew the term ‘fansubbing’ while 44.3% never knew the term of ‘fansubbing’. 95.2%of the students enjoyed reading the subtitles especially English subtitles and they are not involved in
producing the subtitles. 55% of the students did not know that fansubbing is illegal. The respondents
appeared to be anime fans who started watching Japanese anime from an early age. 26.65% started
watching when they were 6 years old and younger, 33.7% started watching anime from the age of 7 to
12 years old and 26.8% started watching anime from the age 13-17 of age. 47% of the respondents
watched anime from television stations, 15% from DVD, 64% from websites and 9.1% from Netflix andIflix. Students have different ways to access to the videos of animes including 20.9% from websites,
24.8% from streaming and 52.3% from both downloading and streaming. 88.5% of the students
downloaded the videos from entertainment websites with mostly English subtitles. 53.5% of these
respondents watched anime when they had no assignments or on their free time while 29.1% watchedanime during weekends or semester holiday. Based on the focus groups data, students use their interestand knowledge on anime to start a conversation and making friends. Most of the students appear to bepassive user of anime because they are just consumers of the anime. The students are not involved in theactivities of producing the subtitles for a particular forum or websites.
From the research findings, watching Japanese anime is one of the most popular source of entertainment
among university students in Malaysia. They love Japanese language and they use their knowledge tomake and retain friends in college. This research has taught me the ropes of doing a more systematicresearch especially the involvement of a big number of respondents involving young university students.
I should have video recorded the focus group sessions so that it is easier to transcribe the audio of theinterviews. I am in the midst of writing journal articles using the research findings that contributes towritings on youth’s motivations of anime viewing and also from the sociological perspective offansubbing and the viewers in translation studies. Thank you Sumitomo Foundation for this opportunity!!

Publication of the Results of Research Project:
Verbal Presentation (Date, Venue, Name of Conference, Title of Presentation, Presenter, etc.)
1. Dr Intan Safinaz Zainudin(the head researcher) presented a paper entitled ‘The Phenomenon of Fansubbing
Among University Students’ at a Translation Conference organised by Universiti Malaya. The conference washeld from 8-10 August 2017 at the Crystal Crown Hotel, Petaling Jaya. Feedbacks were received on the topic byfans of anime in the audience.
2. Dr Intan Safinaz Zainudin presented a paper entitled ‘The Phenomenon of Anime and Fansubbing Among
UKM Students: A Pilot Study’ at Sols INTEC conference organised by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM).
The conference was held from 20-21 November 2017. Feedback from the audience helped to improve thequestionnaire.
3. On 19th April 2018 Dr Intan Safinaz Zainudin was invited to present a paper entitled ‘Fenomena Fansubbing
Anime dalam kalangan pelajar university di Malaysia’ at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS). She
presented the paper in Malay because the audience are the lecturers of Malay language and Japanese students whoare learning Malay. The objective of this presentation was to share the profile and characteristic of anime fansamong Malaysian university students with the students at TUFS.
4. Dr Normalis Amzah, one of the co-researchers presented a paper entitled ‘Anime Phenomenon and CopyrightIssues Awareness Related to Fansubbing Among Malaysian University Students’. The conference wasorganized by the 6th JSA ASEAN Conference 2018 that was held from 6-7 December 2018 in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The conference is a place for Japanese Studies scholars to meet and exchange ideas on Japan-ASEAN relationship.
The relationship encompasses various areas such as, history, politics, economy, social and education. Althoughpreviously the conference series tend to present scholars in International Relation studies, however, there are fewstudies that discussed about language, literature, media and communication. At the conference Dr Normalispresented and discussed issues related to anime distribution and copyright laws in Japan as well as South East Asia
particularly Malaysia. This seems to expand the scope of issues that could be discussed related to Japan-and SEA
relationship.Through the conference, she received feedback from scholars of different background such as
international relation and political science and the feedback helped her to understand the findings from different
perspectives.

5. On 2 November 2019, the research assistant of this project Aini Faseeha Mohd Asridin graduated with Master of Arts
in English Language Studies. The title of her thesis is ‘Multimodal Analysis of a Fansubbed Anime Programme:
A Case Study’. Aini was involved with transferring the survey data into SPSS and the second focus group.

Article (Publisher and Date of the Book, Title and Author of the Book, etc.)
1. Intan Safinaz Zainudin & Normalis Amzah. 2017. Fansubbing among university students. Impact Advancing
Knowledge and Technology: Towards National Transformation. Nov. UKM.